How are we so normal?
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. -Isaiah 7:14
God is with us. I wonder if a devotional writer ever just simply wrote that one sentence and then stopped? What could we possibly add to that simple and powerful statement, “God is with us?” The theology term to describe what Isaiah is prophesying is incarnation. The word literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. For those of us who are followers of Jesus it describes the most significant event in human history. As the Gospel author John says, “The word became flesh.”
“God is with us.” What does that little sentence do to you? What does it do in you?
For John the Baptist it drove him to the woods to preach about the coming of the Messiah. John was wearing strange clothes, and had an even stranger diet. We often make him our to be the freak of the New Testament. Granted he was eccentric, like so many of the great prophets, but it is clear he was deeply affected by the word becoming flesh.
I wonder if John the Baptist had a chance to look at our lives what he might say. “Okay, I know it’s strange to live in the woods, I know it’s strange to eat locust… I know I am strange, but how are you so normal?”
We see in the John the Baptist a man so deeply affected by the incarnation of Christ he would never live a normal life again.
How does the simple phrase, “God is with us,” change your day-to-day routine?