(Audio)
Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign:
the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel.
Ahaz might have delayed this sign by his unwillingness to ask for it. But even his reluctance did not change God's desire to give the sign.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means "God is with us."
God had a desire to be "with us" that was so strong that he wouldn't let anything stand in the way of the fulfillment of that desire.
It is still the case that many of us have a hard time asking for all that God has promised. The reasons for this reluctance are manifold. We think them too good to be true, we think God too disinterested in us to give them, or we've been hurt before and are unwilling to trust now.
What is God telling us to ask for this morning, as Christmas draws near? In what way does he want to be more truly "with us" and how can we invite him closer? Let's not weary him by making him wait.
to bring about the obedience of faith,
for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles,
among whom are you also, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ;
to all the beloved of God in Rome, called to be holy.
Jesus wants to come so close to us. He is "established as Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness through resurrection from the dead". He longs to make us sons an daughters of God in him, with his own Spirit of holiness and his own resurrection power transforming us from the inside out, making his obedience our own.
When we give even a little room for Jesus to enter his Spirit within us helps us to open ourselves to receive more of his promises. Let us open wide the gates of our hearts to Christ, as Saint John Paul the Great was fond of saying.
Lift up your heads, O gates;
rise up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may enter.
O King of all nations and keystone of the Church:
come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!
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