Picture a young Jewish girl, living in the lush green hills of Galilee, far from the bustle of Jerusalem. She knows the Scriptures. She prays for God to send the Messiah to re-establish his rule. She longs for Israel to again be a light to the nations. But never in her wildest dreams does she imagine how God will answer her prayers.
Even more, this young girl, Mary, has something far more immediate on her mind. She is engaged to be married and soon to leave the protection of her father’s home and begin a new life with Joseph.
By night, she imagines how she will arrange her furniture and decorate her house. How fortunate she is that her beloved Joseph is a carpenter and can make what they cannot afford to buy. By day, with needle and thread, she works her dreams into linen cloth.
Then in the midst of her joyous anticipation, preparations, and prayers, she receives a frightening visitation from an angel who says, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” And Mary is greatly troubled.
Even though we have heard this same story many times before, and even though the plot doesn’t change from year to year and we are very familiar with the details, yet each Christmas we lean forward with anticipation, because we believe that somehow this story is about us.
What if the angel’s message to Mary, “The Lord is with you” is God’s message to us? We desire to see God, but do we know how and where to look? Do we know how to open space in our busy and cluttered lives for the indwelling presence of God?
“The Lord is with you.” That simple, startling statement came to Mary as surprise and promise. Most likely we have read and heard these words so often that the element of “surprise” has completely evaporated from them. Yet that is precisely the glorious message of Christmas. Not only is there a God, but that God comes very near to us in the most unexpected places and circumstances as “surprise.”
To believe that God is above us as the almighty, all-sufficient, sovereign God is one thing. But to believe that God is the sovereign, loving God with us, that he is God near us, the intimate God who understands us, that my friend, is the best news of all.
For the eternal, all-powerful, high and holy God to come down into human life is a most marvelous and amazing thing. God’s coming to us in human flesh tells us that he is not like the philosopher king in Thomas Carlyle’s classic writing, Sartos Resortus, who gazes out of his attic window. Down below him stretch the dark streets of despair where half a million human beings are herded and crowded together. The joyful and the sorrowful, people dying and people being born, some praying and others cursing, women laughing and others weeping. And looking down from his attic window, the philosopher king concludes, “But I – I sit above it all. I am alone with the stars.”
No, that is not our God. The God who came to us in Jesus is deeply involved in our human situation. God became what we are, in order that we might become what he is. He wants his face of love, peace, and joy to dwell in us and be reflected from our lives.
And when man reached the end of his long struggle to find peace, forgiveness and salvation, it was God who “became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).
Christmas is God’s answer to our brokenness and sin. Christmas is the good news that God wants to do something about our failures and fears. Christmas is about God coming to us, indwelling us to forgive, heal, and restore us to a wholeness of love, peace, and joy.
There is not a more beautiful picture of God’s Father-love than that which shows him as our companion in our many experiences of sin, sickness, sorrow, and the often difficult daily routine of work. There are no more comforting, reassuring words than to hear, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Be still, my soul and listen to the angel speak. And also listen to the last recorded words of Jesus, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20).
“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – December 18, 2019
Ray M. Geigley
Healing Rays of Righteousness 
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