Week 306

Positive post Sunday, January 8, 2023- Week 306. 

As we settle into the New Year, most of us have put the holiday decorations away and made our New Year’s resolutions (or if you read last week’s PPS, Resolutions for Goodwill).  While getting back into our regular routines, returning to work or going back to school after all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, let’s not forget the meaning of Emmanuel – God With Us.

Here’s an excerpt from God with Us | Catholic Answers that provides some perspective.
God with us (Matt. 1:22-23, 28:20)
A key theme in Matthew’s Gospel is fulfillment. Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming Messiah. As Jesus himself says, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17, emphasis added). Eleven times Matthew describes an event and writes that it happened “to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.” This theme is vital for Matthew’s purpose of establishing for his Jewish audience that Jesus is the one for whom God prepared the world.
The first time Matthew uses the language of fulfillment is in the proclamation of Christ’s birth:  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel (which means “God with us”) (Matt. 1:22-23).

We are so blessed to have God with us all the time.  I see and feel him everywhere in my daily life.  All I do is open my eyes and ears and with an open heart and mind, I feel his grace all around me.  

Here’s an example.  I have a long-standing tradition of going on a bike ride with my buddies every Saturday morning.  Most Saturdays, we go on the “Bagel ride”, a ride from Redlands to Riverside and back, stopping at the bagel shop in Canyon Crest.  Yesterday, it was just Byron and me, and as we were riding around the loop at the top of Barton Road, we got a bird’s eye view of a snowcapped Mt. Baldy illuminated by the sun rising from the east like a spotlight on a clear and crisp early morning.  It was an amazing view, one that could be featured on the front page of a National Geographic magazine.  As I was thinking about how blessed we are to experience God’s amazing displays of nature, I realized we were riding up to the bold and distinguished cross on the hill, a subtle reminder that God was with us.  With an open heart and mind, I quietly gave thanks to God and, although it doesn’t do justice to the moment or the view, I took the picture attached with the glowing mountains behind the cross.  God is good!

How do you keep God with you in your daily life?

Where do you see God in others and in nature?  

How do others see God in you?