It as about a year ago when my husband and I looked at each other and knew that it was time.
It was time to stop waiting around for something to happen and for our circumstances to change. We made a decision to step out into the unknown and chase a dream and we weren’t sure what that would mean.
By April we were moving and raising support to cover all our needs. I remember writing these words with knots in my soul. I confess I wasn’t sure that God was going to meet us in the midst of our mess. I was afraid that it would be just that; a mess.
I found myself sounding like a broken record player with trite words ringing “God better show up!” and “We need God to meet us where we are.”
But the truth is that God didn’t have to show up.
He was already there. He has always been there.
Emmanuel. God with us.
Isaiah prophesied and then 400 years of silence, but God was always there.
Dark matter, the stuff that scientists can’t capture is there holding the spinning particles of life together invisibly. That is the stuff of God. The invisible constant. The God that from the day He breathed life long into the first man’s lungs has never stopped being with us and for us.
When Jesus came to buy us back, as a baby to live,die,rise and redeem, His Father literally called Him “God is with us”.
I don’t think that God was trying to communicate through the Emmanuel child that He was just showing up on the scene. No, I think He was very clearly communicating in a physical, visible to the naked eye way that He had been there all along.
He was there in the garden mist walking alongside Adam and Eve when they walked away from Him. He has been there in every story from Moses to Mary weaving His mercy in ways unfathomable.
We don’t have to wait for God to show up. He is already here and has been and Jesus’ birth wasn’t proof of that it was an extension.
If we’re waiting on God to show up then at some point we must have left His side.
Again and again our hearts wandering in darkness looking for light wander away and again and again He gives Jesus and grace upon grace. He is with us even when we find ourselves far from Him.
We’re six months moved into this new calling and dream and it hasn’t been easy. We’ve had white knuckled days wondering if the ends would meet. I don’t know if that will ever not be the case, but one thing I’ve realized is that God really is with us.
He’s not caught in traffic. He isn’t running late. He is not an absentee father.
He is the God who walked in skin just to prove that He was and is with us.
He is with us on December 25th and every day in between.
Emmanuel.
Jessica Leigh Hoover is a wife, mama, writer and grace lover. She lives in the hills of North Carolina where her family serves with an organization that trains those serving the least among us in a foreign land. .She is as a birth doula, loves chocolate, {hot or iced and always sweet} tea, British television and heaps of good conversation. She blogs about her belief that grace is the biggest kind of brave. She can be found loitering and laughing it up on twitter and facebook.
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“He’s not caught in traffic. He isn’t running late. He is not an absentee father.” I love this, Jessica! What a beautiful reminder that he is here…now and always.