With?

Emmanuel...

God with us is a title that we struggle to understand. It can mean so many different things, depending on how we read the word ‘WITH’...

God has joined us, living, breathing, struggling in the natural?

God is amongst us, making his presence known, felt?

God is working to see his redemption dream come to realization and is doing so using Us...

If you google,
‘man with shovel’ you will get 1,180,000 image results in 0.40 seconds.
‘man with hammer’ you’ll get 7,910,00 image results in 0.41 seconds.
‘man with saw’ you’ll get 174,000,00 image results in 0.44 seconds...

There’s no way of googling it, but if you could somehow load in
‘God with man’, the number would presently stand at around 7 billion in this instant.

God with us.

If we take this thinking further, however, recognizing that every ‘image’ on the internet has been uploaded there over the history of the Net, how great would the number of pictures of God With Us be since that moment when he stated emphatically: “This is very good.”

The choice is ours, how actively we mean to be employed by God specifically towards the realization of his redemption dream.

'Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel!'

spiritual pretending

confession time.

i take advantage of darkness to do something i would never think of doing in the light.

in those times when i wake up early in the dark, before the sun comes up even, and am immediately aware of something having gone dreadfully funkified in the kitchen garbage, i will run that garbage out to the dumpster wearing only the boxers and t-shirt that i've been sleeping in... i won't even put on shoes. i do so because i know that no one will see me in the dark.

interesting how taking the garbage out under cover of the darkness perpetuates the illusion of having created no garbage.

'those people are so clean. so... NOT wasteful'

I saw some good intentions at leadership conventions

But intrinsic motivations lead egocentric nations

Someone cried 'over here' and where the mud had cleared

Were names and dates all written- drowned like unwanted kittens

Don't stray from the rhythm

Don't fall out of tune

The good book says that dead flies

Taint the richest perfume

darkness is something that people have used since the beginning of time to cloak their actions- particularly the less-than-honourable ones. those who hold public office or who are otherwise always under the character scrutiny of the public eye often find the pressure of living up to the expectations implied in their callings burdensome and suffocating. over time, many fall into self-justified 'reward' behaviours which are not only unbecoming, but inappropriate and self-destructive. the whole 'holiness by day and hedonism by night' inconsistency has created many a charicatured non-example of how to live life inspiring to man or glorifying to God because this kind of thing always seems to surface. no matter how carefully the esteemed leader, pious preacher or public servant has been at hiding the evidence of his or her folly, eventually garbage day comes, the full dumpster is emptied and the truth is known.

spiritual pretending is one of the things that drove Jesus crazy.