Promise of Immanuel

Some people experience a quiet ache around Christmastime. It comes in softly and sometimes goes unnoticed at first. You start to sense the ache even before the plates are distributed, or the laughter begins; you can feel it before anyone says a word.  You see an empty seat at the table as your gaze strays to a familiar spot.

For some, that seat belongs to someone who has passed away.

For others, it belongs to someone still living, but painfully distant.

For others, it belongs to a version of life that once was and quietly slipped away.

Christmas has a way of making that absence of loss louder. The lights almost feel too bright, the music stirs with memories you didn’t ask for. Traditions return, but they don’t quite land as softly and joyfully as they used to. Beneath the beauty and the noise of it all, there is often a question we don’t know how to say out loud: “How do you celebrate Christmas, when your heart is carrying the weight of loss?”

Many of us feel the pressure to cover the ache of our hearts. To just try to be cheerful and move on. Sometimes we even convince ourselves that faith means pushing past sadness, or even that gratitude and grief cannot coexist. But the Christmas story tells a totally different truth.  Long before the manger scene, a promise was whispered into a trembling world: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel - God with us. Not as a far-off concept or a voice from a distance, but as nearness itself: present, embodied, and close. 

Matthew tells the birth of Jesus without softening its gravity. He emphasizes the name Immanuel, as if urging us not to overlook it and wanting us to remember it. Immanuel is more than beautiful poetic language; it's a bold declaration. God draws near, takes on flesh, and enters the vulnerability of our human lives. Jesus did not have an easy birth. He stepped into a chaotic, unpredictable, and terrifying world. Suffering persisted after his arrival. His life was marked by vulnerability and displacement from the start.

But, this is Immanuel: God with us, not from a distance, but fully alongside us in our brokenness. 

God approaches without waiting for grief to end. 

He doesn't need us to be complete before He arrives.

While the story is still breaking, He enters it.

God with us, in the waiting.

God with us, in the grief.

God with us, in the long, painful nights. 

God with us, when it looks different than it used to. 

God draws near without waiting for fullness. He arrives where there is a void left by love. He comes in and stays, holding us tenderly in the pain of missing it rather than erasing what has been lost. This is why the Christmas story has such a profound effect on those who are grieving. It does not guarantee immediate recovery or the eradication of grief. It guarantees presence, and grief frequently needs presence the most.  And from this presence, a quiet joy can arise. Even when grief feels heavy and nothing feels lifted, we are aware that God is with us. It is a light that chooses to softly shine within the darkness rather than demanding that it go. 

So maybe this Christmas, we see it a little more clearly: Christmas is not just a celebration of everything being whole. It is a proclamation that the Lord came when things were not. It is not about recreating the past, ignoring sorrow, or pretending nothing has changed. It is about the holy interruption of God entering our brokenness and choosing to remain. 

This is Christmas: the promise of Immanuel, God-with-us, a light that comes close and stays, even when the darkness has not yet lifted.