Tag: advent

Imma-Nu-El

Today, as we celebrate the birth of Christ. Yesterday. 2,000+ years ago. Tomorrow. 5,000 years from now. Three little Hebrew words give us meaning and purpose to our existence.  I am sure everyone reading this blog has long heard and used the word Immanuel with the understanding it refers to Jesus, the Son of God.  But most of you have not studied Biblical Hebrew, so you may not know that Immanuel is NOT one word.  It is three small Hebrew words which when put together create this amazing appellation for the Son of God. 

Im is the Hebrew preposition which means “with.” It looks like this – עִם.

Nu is the Hebrew pronoun which means “us.”  It looks like this – נוּ. 

El is the Hebrew proper noun for the name of God, often meaning power, strength, mighty God.  It looks like this – אֵל.

You put these three little words together – adding a double “m” is required before the pronoun “us” may be added to “with,” which also requires an extra vowel – hence, im plus nu becomes “immanu”  instead of just “imnu”.  Probably way too much information, but for any who were questioning – now you know how we got this amazing word Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14 [NIV] says, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:  The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

The New Testament writer Matthew tells us this – “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’) Matthew 1:23 [NIV].

Chew on this for a few moments in the last hours of this Advent day known as December 25th – how often do I really, I mean really, feel that the almighty powerful God who created the universe is actually, really, “with me”?  How often do I even consider that as I go through my daily activities, Imma-Nu-El is indeed with me. 

This promise – made by God through the prophet Isaiah and then repeated centuries later by one of Jesus’ disciples the Gospel writer Matthew – is not just a Christmas Day nice thing to say and sing about. 

This promise from God gives us purpose and meaning to our existence on this planet.  May each of us think on this promise repeatedly every day of our lives. I hope to always connect this promise of Imma-Nu-El with the ending words of the Merton Prayer:  “I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you discovered The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you. 

You will find The Merton Prayer and more at https://themertonprayer.com/

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please email me at TheMertonPrayer@gmail.com.  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Advent — To Come To

Being in Southern California on Christmas day is quite an experience weather-wise for this Chicagoan!  Wearing shorts and a tee-shirt in the middle of winter is just not what I am used to.  Maybe I think clearer in such great weather, you can determine, but the word Advent is on my mind today in a whole new way.

Rarely do we even hear, much less use, the word Advent; instead, it is replaced with “The Christmas Season” or “Christmas Day.” How surprised I was, and disappointed, to read this definition in a dictionary of the word advent:  “arrival of something – e.g., advent of spring” with absolutely NO reference to the use of Advent referring to the coming of Christ as a baby in the manger at Bethlehem!

It seems that these days the only place we hear the word Advent used is in a church, and that’s not bad at all, since in church we hopefully can trust that we hear truth!  Advent – To Come To refers to the Creator of the universe coming into the universe in human flesh and blood, a crying baby lying on straw in a Bethlehem animal shelter.

Advent leads to interesting questions, does it not?  Advent – To Come To only to the planet earth?  Other planets out there where God saw fit to incarnate as a baby?  How does incarnation work anyway?  Assuming that the Creator God does not have flesh on bones like we do, just how does God change into flesh and blood?  An interstellar magic show of sorts?

And this one just knocks my intellectual socks off every time I put energy into trying to answer it:  why would a non-human Creator God even want to become flesh and blood like humans?  To “save us from our sins” is the theological answer to my question but that leads to “why did we need to be saved from our sins?”

And finally, this question may strike some as sacrilegious at best, heretical at worst:  Is it possible that God already does have flesh and blood?  Genesis does say, “God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them“ [Genesis 1:27 NLT]. So, if we humans were created “in his own image” and we have flesh and blood, then maybe, just maybe, God has flesh and blood too?  Sort of like the famous math formula:  if A=B, and B=C, then A=C too!

And then Advent – To Come To raises a whole other set of questions for me.  Since I have been taught, and believed my entire life, that God is omnipresent – which simply means everywhere – is it not logical to wonder “why did God even need to come to earth as a baby if God was already here?”  Maybe this question is easy to answer:  God was always here on earth, we just couldn’t see God.  But wait, there’s more!  If God was already like humans (i.e., with flesh and blood) then why could we not see God here on earth before Jesus was born in Bethlehem? 

Advent – To Come To is not as easy and simple as “away in a manger” and “oh holy night” seem to make it.  I will leave this to the professional theologians, but invite my blog readers to hit the comment button and leave your thoughts on these questions.  Worth pondering, right?  Especially when it’s 76 degrees out and sunny!

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know!  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!