This is Our God

Isaiah 11

1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;

   from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—

   the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

   the Spirit of counsel and of might,

   the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—

3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

   He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,

   or decide by what he hears with his ears;

4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,

   with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;

   with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

5 Righteousness will be his belt

   and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

 6 The wolf will live with the lamb,

   the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

   and a little child will lead them.

7 The cow will feed with the bear,

   their young will lie down together,

   and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

   and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

9 They will neither harm nor destroy

   on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD

   as the waters cover the sea.

 10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.

 12 He will raise a banner for the nations

   and gather the exiles of Israel;

he will assemble the scattered people of Judah

   from the four quarters of the earth.

13 Ephraim’s jealousy will vanish,

   and Judah’s enemies will be destroyed;

Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,

   nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim.

This is Our GodReally?  A temporarily homeless poor couple in a barn with nothing but a feeding trough to offer as a bed for God?  Right.  As if the God of all creation is going to enter into the very world He created in a manner like that!  That's not the way a being like that would act, you would think.  But what if He did? What if that is exactly what God did.  What if "This" really is our God?  And what does that mean?  What is it that Christmas is really inviting us to see?

Christmas is all about unexpected gifts.  Half of the fun of giving gifts is surprising people with something they may not have expected.  What God gave us at the first advent was definitely that.  To a people who were lost in their lostness, God comes looking with grace, compassion and persistence that is amazing in ways we could never have expected or hoped for.

For lost people, who may feel like they are not much more than a "stump" (see the passage to the right), God says that new shoots will arise.  The God Who comes is a God that people were not expecting, and Who brought a message that seemed almost too good to be true.  Take a few moments to read the words that anticipated the coming of Jesus in Isaiah 11 (the passage to the right) and notice the picture of God that is portrayed here.  That's what Pastor Jon invited us to notice as we reflect on and celebrated the God Who showed up in the events that we celebrate at Christmas time.  It is the picture of a God that we could not have expected.  Emanuel, meaning "God is with us."  A picture that reminds us that God continues to be with us, and what He invites us to begin to realize even now.

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