God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize we aren’t walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy.  This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey.  The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.

The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be.  A part of us clings to our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain.  Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost.  Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.

Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him—whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend—be our companion.

Henry Nouwen

The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be.  How often I come up against this challenge—and how often I do exactly what Nouwen describes, blocking off to him the places most needing Immanuel, God With Us.

What is it that causes this hesitancy and tension between longing for Christ’s presence yet fearing and resisting it?  Nouwen hints at reasons: fear, pain, guilt, shame, confusion.  Our fallen nature rearing its ugly head yet again.  And as it goes on, our human condition remains in a constant state of both desiring and avoiding our spiritual destiny.

This challenge to let God be who he wants to be plagues so many of us.  How I have longed to be one of those people who accept this easily with a gift of faith beyond my ability to muster up on my own.  How I desperately wish I could say “I know that I know that I KNOW” about any number of divine mysteries beyond both my intellectual and my emotional grasp.  But, for whatever reason, despite my best efforts, this remains my struggle.  And part of this “letting God be who he wants to be,” for me, includes both embracing this uncertainty and clinging to hope in spite of it.

Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him be our companion.  Our Immanuel.  God With Us.  I know in my heart—indeed, in my spirit—this is our only hope.  God with us.  God in us.  God through us.  I must continue—despite my fear, my shame, my confusion, even my anger—to not just invite him to come, but to actually open the door of my heart when he arrives, giving him access to every dark and discordant room, that he may shine his light into my darkness.

We do not have to be alone.

Immanuel.

Please, come.

advent darkness doubt god Immanuel light