For some people, the Christmas season is a time of joy. However, for many people, it is a stressful time, or a difficult time full of hurtful memories. Christmas today, too, is so filled with commercialism, shopping, and craziness that we often just get lost in a sea of consumerism. Sometimes, during Christmas, we aren’t joyful.

I am one of these people. I often feel depressed during the holiday season and bogged down with my own greed and materialism. If I am being honest, I would say that most Christmas seasons, I feel like I am asking God to reach out and save me from drowning in this mess.

Then I realize, that this desire to be saved from the “mess” that is life is not a new desire by any means. Actually, this feeling predates even the first Christmas (Which lacked shopping and presents, by the way) when the Israelites were promised a Savior. They were always praying and looking out for their Messiah when their country was attacked, invaded, destroyed, separated, patched back together, and under Roman control. The Israelites were a people constantly crying out for God to deliver them.

They could never have imagined how He was going to bring about that deliverance, though. Because in a tiny and unassuming town in the most unlikely place, a virgin woman gave birth to the most unlikely Savior. No one would have ever thought that the baby crying in a stable was God in the flesh come to redeem the world. In fact, no one thought that God Himself would do the work of redemption. It was always assumed that He would send someone else to do it—a David or Abraham figure… Some great, strong leader that would charge into battle against the Romans and take Israel back. God would never get His hands dirty and do the saving Himself…

No, Israel never expected Emmanuel—“God With Us”—but that is exactly the kind of Savior they received. No one expected a Messiah to be born, to cry, to grow up, to feel friendship and love and betrayal, and eventually to die a terrible sinner’s death. Jesus defied all expectations and humbled himself to be the kind of Messiah that wished to feel exactly what humans felt. He wanted to know what it was like to be hungry, poor, to have a family, to work, to learn, to laugh, to cry, to love, to bleed, and even what it was like to die.

That’s the kind of God we have—one who is not only willing to get his hands dirty, but one who is willing to go to any length to show you just how much He loves you. He is a God who is with us. He is our Emmanuel.

Our God is here, even today. I know so often we feel that we are waiting for Him and that we are crying out to be saved, but we have already been saved and He is already here! He has felt everything you have felt, but what’s more, He has overcome all of the world’s evils. Even death.

That’s the kind of God we have. That’s the kind of Messiah we received.

That’s Christmas. Please, never forget that.