Emmanuel – God with us. 

We hear it every year during the Christmas season. We even have a big churchy word, incarnation, to give it definition. Yet in reality, our minds can’t fully grasp the enormity of the God of the Universe coming in human form – especially as a baby.  It is much easier and acceptable to see Jesus as divine. God as a human seems at the very least awkward. The reality is that we proclaim Jesus both divine and human – a paradox of cosmic proportions.

Our own human nature seems to have very little to do with being divine, until you start thinking about it. You and I were made in the image of God. We are to be filled with God’s own Spirit, so that others will recognize His wonderful attributes and sense His presence in our lives.

Maybe for us it should read, Emmanuel – God in us.

We Quakers identify this as the “Light Within.”  Literally, this divine Light Is incarnated in and through our lives. It represents both the living Jesus residing in our hearts and the grace of God extended to us and our neighbor. Jesus’ physical presence may not be with us anymore, but now we are to live the incarnation by being the hands and feet of Jesus to our world.

This Christmas as we gather with neighbors, friends, and relatives, I pray we will look for Christ to come not just in a manger, or in a special gift or story, but in and through each other.  God’s Light is in us – now let’s go share that Light with the world!

Merry Christmas,  Pastor Bob+