He Came to Us
During Advent, we taught our kids about Jesus’ coming with a plush Nativity set a friend gave us. On Christmas Eve, we hid the baby Jesus and the kids eagerly searched around our apartment for him. Our 1-year-old son found him (in a shoe) and we all celebrated and cheered as he placed him in manger! “Jesus is the best present” we told them. He gave himself to us.
This Advent, our church did
a sermon series called, “He Came to Us.” I love how that phrase communicates Jesus’ coming in such a personal way. It was to us. For us. The Nicene Creed says it like this:
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
During Advent, my father-in-law released his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew called “God With Us.” The beginning of this Gospel introduces Jesus as Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), and ends with the Lord telling his disciples that he will be with them always (Matthew 28:20).
This song came out of reflections about the love of God—a love so strong that he will stop at nothing to be with us. He comes down for us and is born as one of us, he goes to the cross, he raises again to defeat death so that nothing will ever separate us from him again (Romans 8:38), and he is coming back for us to bring us to live with him forever. This song is our response; we come to the God who came for us.
Other references: Matthew 8:20, Revelation 3:20, John 1:14, John 14:3
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