From Edie: A reflective Christmas meditation on Emmanuel—God with us—exploring presence, family, storytelling, and how writers can create with the assurance that we never write alone.
Dipping the Quill Deeper: Emmanuel
by Eva Marie Everson @EversonAuthor
Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (Matthew 1:23 KJV).
My daughter and her husband gave the name “Emmanuel” as the middle name to their second son.
Just today, I put Christmas music on in my car as I drove their oldest and myself to see a theater presentation of It’s a Wonderful Life (the first time I’ve ever seen it on the big screen!). As we traveled along the highway toward the venue, a stirring version of Veni, Veni Emmanuel began. Knowing that my grandson is currently studying Latin, I asked him if he knew what “Veni” means.
Of course, he did. “Come.”
“Besides just being the middle name of your baby brother,” I continued with my MiMi-like chatter, “do you know the meaning of Emmanuel?”
“God with us,” he said matter-of-factly.
Yes, yes, yes . . . God with us.
What an amazing thought. What a precious gift.
Later, as we sat in a theater full of movie-goers, I glanced over at my how-did-he-get-to-be-thirteen-year-old grandson. His eyes were wide in wonder and his smile broad at the antics of Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey. Especially when George and Mary fell into the school’s swimming pool.
My heart smiled. Of all the presents “’round the tree” this year, having these few hours with my baby’s baby will truly be among the greatest. Why? Not so much because we were watching a classic in a beautiful theater, but because we were together. We laughed as we experienced the joys of life in Bedford Falls and then, as tears welled in our eyes, the heartache of George’s belief that he was worth more dead than alive.
Later, after I dropped my grandson off at a friend’s house for adventures in baking gingerbread houses (how fun is that?), I turned the music down low and contemplated the last few hours I’d shared with him. Being with my grandson—no matter what we were doing—my, my. Such a gift.
How then, I thought, might the first century world who knew—the first century world who understood—have felt when they first realized that God was now with them?
That God was now with them?
That God was now with them?
My heart beat a little bit faster at those questions. So important was His being with mankind—so vital was His presence on Earth to bridge the gap between the best of His creation and Himself as Creator—that prophets wrote about it hundreds of years before the event. And since? For over 2,000 years, beginning with the disciples and apostles, men and women have been writing about God with Us, Emmanuel, striving to express God’s love, His greatest gift to us because God treasured being with us to a world that may not understand it fully. Or know at all.
But do we, dear writers, grab hold of those precious “God with Us” moments when we prepare to write? As we research our work? When we put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard, do we grasp the notion that we are not in this alone?
Perhaps not. Perhaps we get so involved in the “show” of life and of this work, that we forget that, together—Emmanuel and we—are providing a roadmap to the world, teaching them about the Father’s greatest gift.
As George Bailey would learn by the end of the film.
As we surely already know.
And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel (Isaiah 8:8, KJV).
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