The Seventh Gift of Christmas - Empowered by “Emmanuel”
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” Matthew 1:23 NLT
God is always present with us. It is our thoughts and feelings that keep us from experiencing God’s presence. Neuroscientists have confirmed how important our thoughts are. Descartes espoused the view, “I think, therefore I am.” This is the thinking of a person who sees himself or herself as a human being seeking spiritual experiences. Jesus came to teach us a different way of thinking - to be a spiritual being having a spiritual experience. It is knowing “I am, therefore I think.”
The sins of anger and gluttony are the weeds that choke the wheat of God’s love in my heart. I need spirit of mourning to recognize the presence of the weed of anger. I need to hunger and thirst for righteousness to fertilize the wheat of God’s love. Emmanuel is a “word prayer” I can use to increase my awareness of God’s presence especially in times when I am walking through a dark valley as well as the times when I am feasting in God’s banquet of love.
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