God Is Here!

The good news of Christmas is not in heaven, that you should say,”Who will go up to heaven for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?”  Nor is that good news  beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?  It is a thing very near to you, upon your lips and in your heart ready to be kept” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14).

The good news of Christmas has been around since time began (even before time began)—long before the advent of Jesus Christ. Emmanuel—God with us—did not begin in Bethlehem. The good news of Christmas is that God has been around before the very foundations of the world were laid.  God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the garden, and called Abraham to leave his home and kinsman to find a new land.  God spoke to Moses through a burning bush and told him go free the slaves in Egypt.  God has been here; God is here.  Not in heaven, not across the sea, but here, right here,  right where we live.  The good news is a thing very near to us all.

God is here—in the world—in you, in me, in our neighbors and in our enemies—waiting to be recognized, waiting to be born!  This is Christmas! This is the glad tidings of great joy we are to announce, share, sing, and publish abroad.  Each one of us is called to be a midwife, one to the other, recognizing ourselves and the person (all persons) next to us as being pregnant with God.  The task of every human being is to encourage and help one another give that God birth in the Bethlehem of each individual heart, thus transforming society and the world.  

There is a deep-seated contempt for human life among us these days (though it has always been around).  It is a condition described biblically as “hardness of heart.”  It is an affliction in both individuals and institutions (including this nation and all other nations).  It presumes that there is "no room in the inn,” for anyone else but us!  We have even made the  “stable” off-limits! We proclaim, as those at that first Christmas long ago proclaimed, “Nothing good can come from Nazareth!”  It was this very “hardness of heart” that prompted God, who has always been here, to take drastic action, to provide an example of what being fully human means—an embracing, inclusive, love-based person named Jesus.  

Have no fear.  Even now the living waters flow.