God with us

This morning I finished my annual read-through of the Bible. I try to wrap up by Thanksgiving because reading Revelation during the Christmas season seems a little odd. But this morning, I decided that the end of Revelation is an awesome transition into Advent.

Take this excerpt from Revelation 21:1-4, for example: “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”

God with us – Immanuel – is the name of my church. It’s one of the names by which Jesus is prophesied in the Old Testament. And here, in this vision of heaven, is the key fact that what makes it heaven is that God dwells with his people. 

This is the basic promise of Christmas – that after centuries of separation from God, begun with the original sin in the Garden of Eden – we will once again be re-united with God. That chasm created by our waywardness, bridgeable only by our blood, has been spanned, or better yet, filled in by the cross. God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, and he will be with us again in the new heaven and new earth. 

In the words of the children’s bible we read to our grandkids, this is the start of God’s great rescue plan. We enter the Advent season, pointing us toward Christmas. God with us, the promise, became reality – that’s what we commemorate. We live that reality in part now, with free access to an ever-present God and the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit – that’s the outcome of Christmas. And all of it is a foreshadowing of what awaits us in the new Jerusalem. 

No more death or crying or pain. God dwelling among us. The amazing ending to the greatest story ever told – our story.