While it is at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, it is at the name Immanuel that every heart saw the Image of it’s greatest longing: nearness. 

While He came to earth as a baby, the emphasis, the impact of Christmas-that part that moves and impassions us, fills and transforms us-isn’t that He was an infant but that that infant came NEAR.  What was separate and untouchable could be beheld.  Loved.  Touched.  Known.  Real.  Present. 

What is more approachable than a baby?  More unconditionally loving, warming, close, near?  The Baby is a metaphor!  A living picture of the greatest longing of every human heart.  What we want is that which a baby epitomizes.  We want to draw near, feel the warmth, the sweet tenderness, the approachable surrender and innocence that everything else seems to lack.  We want One who will be all that to us. And we spend our lives longing for the Baby to be close enough to warm our lives by.

That’s why Christmas is so powerful, so moving, so reverent.  Because in it that longing all humanity knew and harbored finally emerged from the clouds and shadows, it took shape and threw back the veil of uncertainty and desire.

We knew we longed for something but knew not quite what it was. 

In Christmas, our longing took it’s form, it stepped out of it’s cloak of mystery and bore a name:  Immanuel, He is near.

That’s why it’s a big deal.  That’s why we celebrate Christmas big like Easter, or why we should.  That’s why it’s worth recounting and retelling year after year.  Because at Christmas God finally unveiled what we all are searching for; He sent IT in a glimpse, a foreshadowing, a taste in human years of a reality in eternal assurance.  Nearness.  A forever of together.  The one thing we really just can’t live without:  HIM near me.  Always.