Today at Fellowship Bible Church, we had Christmas in February. Well, not exactly. We’re going through the Gospel of Luke and today’s passage happened to be the familiar Christmas passage of Luke 2:1-20. One thing that caught me was how Mary when she was traveling must have been expecting a nice, warm room in the inn where she could safely deliver her Child. And what happened when the reality turned out to be far different than her expectations.

As someone pointed out, Mary must have been thinking, “Lord, surely not this stable! Surely, this is not what You had in mind. Surely, the innkeeper will come out at the last minute and say how he’s sorry but they do have a vacancy after all and how it was just a big misunderstanding.” But nothing like that happened.

Sometimes our life turns out way different than what we exptected. We end up in the stable of a cancer diagnosis or a seemingly eternal single status or a family rift. We think, “Surely this is not what You had in mind for me. Surely You will come through and make this right.” But still we remain in the stable. We walk through our pain and grief and not around it or over it. There is no shortcut, but only a narrow and hard road to follow.

Jesus knows what it’s like to be left out in the cold. For there to be no room for Him. He knows all about being in a stable.

The beautiful part of the story is that out of the stable came Immanuel. And Immanuel does not mean God watching us from a distance (as Bette Midler sang once). It means God with us, God near us, God for us, and God on our side. It means God became one of us and walked through all our sorrow, pain, grief, and trouble. It means that He still walks with us through all our anxieties and doubts and fears. It means He carried all those things on Him at Calvary. It means that many times, He carries us when we can no longer walk or even crawl.

Let that be your song today: that Immanuel is here and He’s never going to leave you. It’s a guaranteed promise that He will bring you safely through and you will shout at the end that it was all worth it because you discovered Jesus was all He said He was and so much more.

Amen and amen.