Tuesday, November 29, 2005

God is Emmanuel

Advent a time of preparation, preparation of the heart and mind, Like Lent it’s also a penitential time to reflect and seek forgiveness in readiness to receive Christ a fresh in our lives!

God is Emanuel which means God is with us, he’s right in the depths of over lives, of our very beings, experiencing everything we go through, and saying its ok I’m here!

But isn’t it sometimes (maybe all the time) hard to see Christ at work in the lives of:

The Homeless
Drug Addict
Person with Mental Illness
Person with a Terminal Illness
Those who have just given up
Those in Prison

God comes to all of us and says I am here, rest on me I will give you strength for today and forever. Our challenge today is to seek God in each other to encourage each other on our Advent journey to our Bethlehem!

4 comments:

ash said...

Thanks for that...

I've been intrigued by how both you and Andy have linked advent to others... that it is not just us who are journeying, but all people.

You are right to point us to society's "untouchables"... God is with them as much as me. We are all journeying... not just me and God together.

thanks for this!

Unknown said...

Thanks Ash, I had not read Andy's post until after I posted mine, God is at work me thinks!

Anonymous said...

thanks for the blog

I'm doing 4 evenings on advent and one of the things we did last night was use the parable Jesus told about the sheep and the goats - when I was hungry, you fed me ... - which ties in well with your comment about hard to see Christ at work in the lives of those on the fringes of society.

Unknown said...

Thanks Andy hope the Advent talks go well.

Laurence yes I was meaning to add both of those but forgot, both of these are as important as the others, yes for some reason we seem to de-humanise some people I guess it's because they don't fit our idea of what a 'normal' person looks like so by doing this by making them non people we can deal with them, we don't have to worry about them any more, O God grant us your compassion for all peoples, to see you at work in and through them Amen!