Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

New Testament

Why the Most Important Word in the Bible is With {on Christmas Eve and every day}

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“What do you think is the most important word in the Bible?” That’s the question author Sara Miles posed to the audience who gathered at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lutheran Center last month.

My pastor Beth Ann was there that night, and when we met for lunch a couple of days later, she asked me the same question.

I couldn’t decide on my answer; there were too many good options. Was it love? Grace? Forgiveness? Salvation? Or maybe it Jesus or God – those both seemed like good possibilities, too.

I looked at Beth Ann and shrugged, unable to choose just one word.

“She said it was with,” Beth Ann answered. “She said the most important word in the Bible is with.”

I hadn’t expected that answer, but when I heard it, I nodded. Out of context, with isn’t a very important or impactful word. A mere preposition, with doesn’t carry much weight. But in the context of the Bible, and in the context of this day, Christmas Eve, with is everything.

Immanuel.

It means God with us. Not simply God alone – unreachable, distant, removed – but God with us – right here, right now, in the midst of our everyday, ordinary, messy lives.

In the Gospel of Luke we read a story that for many is as familiar as our own personal history. Some of us have read the story of Jesus’ birth every Christmas for as long as we can remember. Some of us can recite it nearly by heart. And yet, when was the last time we really thought about the impact of Jesus’ birth on our own personal lives and on who we are as human beings living in this present moment?

Jesus came humbly, with humility, not as a powerful, ruling Lord, but as a helpless, dependent, human baby, wrapped in swaddling and laid in a manger. He came like the rest of us, as a human being. He was divine, but he was also human, and he experienced life, with its laughter and lament, its triumph and travail, like we do.

Jesus knows our pain, and our passion; he knows the depth of our sorrow and the height of our joy. He knows it because he lived it. He knows it because he lives it with us still.

With. It’s a small word, a preposition, pretty ordinary and unremarkable. But when it comes to our Savior, with makes all the difference. Immanuel is God with us, born into flesh 2,000 years ago, present with us today.

…

From my family to yours, we wish you a joyful Christmas and a peaceful, healthy New Year. Thank you for being the very best people!

Love,

Michelle

Let’s Grow Something Beautiful…Together

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When I was young I was always the kid who wanted to compare test scores with my peers. You know, the annoying one who asks, “So…what’d you get on the math test?” I was competitive, and I wanted to make sure my grades were at least on par. If I came up short, I often got mad. And jealous.

Truthfully, I haven’t changed all that much, except now I’m a big kid, and my competitiveness shows up not in weekly arithmetic and spelling quizzes but in my career as a writer. My question isn’t, “What’d you get on the grammar test?” but “How many books did you sell this year?” Or “How many Facebook followers do you have?” Or “Who is endorsing your book?”

I don’t always verbalize these questions out loud, but more often than not, I’m thinking them in my head. And if I suspect I am coming up short in comparison, I often react the same way I did as a kid. I get mad. And jealous.

This, of course, is not only infantile, shallow behavior, it’s also short-sighted. When I focus on my accomplishments, or lack thereof, compared to someone else’s, I lose sight of the big picture. I supplant God’s vision of his kingdom here on earth with my own self-interested goals and desires.

God has a clear vision for what his kingdom on earth should and will look like, and he has a job for each one of us to help bring this vision to fruition. In God’s plan, the specifics of who is doing what don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that we are working collaboratively toward one common goal.

Paul put it this way to the Corinthians:

“It’s not important who does the planting and who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together for the same purpose.” (1 Corinthians 3:7-8).

In other words, in my little world as a writer, what’s important isn’t how many books I sell compared to her, or how many Facebook followers I have compared to him, but that I am working together with my peers for the same purpose: to help God grow his kingdom on earth.

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I know how easy it is to get caught up in the comparison game. I know how quickly we can tumble into the pit of insecurity, resentment, and envy. But I also know that training our gaze on our own successes and failures compared to those of our peers does nothing to help further God’s kingdom.

Maybe your job is to plant or to water. Maybe it’s to till the soil, spread fertilizer, pull weeds, or harvest the bounty. Considered in and of itself, your contribution may seem small and unimportant, but remember this: God is using your work to grow his kingdom here on earth.

Only God can take the life within the seed and bring it forth into blooms and fruit, but your small piece – your planting or watering, your tilling or fertilizing – is an important and necessary part of that process.

Let’s not lose sight of our greater purpose. Together, my hand in yours, our hands in God’s, we are helping him grow something beautiful.

How to Remember As If

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A friend of mine is going through a hard time. Suffice to say, without getting into the details, she’s hit rock-bottom, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And I have let her down. I haven’t been the kind of friend she has so desperately needed.

I can list a whole bunch of excuses to explain my lack of presence; reasons that make sense and are, in many ways, the truth: I’m busy; my kids have me running in circles; I have deadlines to meet; we’ve been traveling; I meant to call her.

But the truth is uglier than that. The truth is, a big part of me wanted to avoid my friend because her situation is messy. I wanted to protect myself from the pain I knew would go hand-in-hand with compassion.

“Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters,” writes Paul to the Hebrews. “…Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.” (Hebrews 13:1, 3)

As if.

You might breeze over them, but these two simple words are the key to these verses. These two words force us to bridge the gap, that comfortable space, between ourselves and those who are suffering.

Paul doesn’t intend for us to “love” and “remember” at arm’s length, at a distance. Instead, he expects us to love and remember as if those suffering are our own brothers and sisters, our own flesh and blood; as if, in fact, this suffering is our very own pain.

Honestly, there’s only one way to remember and love as if, and it’s not easy or comfortable:

As if requires that we get close to the ugly, the uncomfortable, the messy, the awkward, the unfixable.

As if requires that we move toward someone else’s pain, and even to carry some of that pain ourselves.

As human beings, our instincts compel us toward self-preservation. We are naturally inclined to distance ourselves from anything that might be physically or even psychologically harmful. We are conditioned, both by society and by our own genetic make-up, to protect ourselves.

But Jesus calls us to do the opposite. He calls us to move toward pain and discomfort, to immerse ourselves in it for the good of others. Some people, the rare few, do this naturally. They are the ones with the God-given gift of empathy. But as Paul implies in these verses, just because we don’t naturally have the gift of empathy doesn’t mean we are off the hook.

Recently my friend and I talked for a long time on the phone. She cried — a lot – and told me some things that were difficult to hear, things I couldn’t solve, problems for which I had no answers, no ready-made solutions.

It was uncomfortable. I fought the urge to come up with an excuse to end the conversation the whole time we were on the phone, not because I don’t care about my friend, but because I was in way over my head and way out of my comfort zone. I felt overwhelmed by my obvious inadequacies. I couldn’t fix her problems; I couldn’t put a positive spin on her situation or even offer much affirmation. I was mostly silent while she talked. “I’m so sorry,” I said, again and again between her sobs. My words felt small and pathetic.

Those kinds of phone calls, that kind of walking alongside in the awkward and the painful, that’s what Paul means when he urges us to Remember as if.

As if demands that we step out of our comfortable place. As if means we enter into someone else’s suffering, offer our inadequate words and our compassionate quiet, and carry, if only for a moment, a bit of their pain.

Questions for You: 
Can you think of someone in your life right now who might need you to walk alongside them through a difficult time? What’s one small way you might do that?

For When You’re Feeling Abandoned

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A couple of months ago I posted a Facebook status update about an especially controversial issue. Within minutes, and throughout the rest of that day, I was lambasted with comments and criticism from people – mainly Christians — who did not agree with my stance. By the end of the day, there were close to 100 comments, most of them negative, many of them caustic, some downright vitriolic.

A few people messaged, emailed, or called me privately to offer encouragement (not necessarily to agree with my opinion on the issue, but simply to let me know they were thinking about me as I stood in the line of fire), and I deeply appreciated that. But for the most part, few chimed in publicly to stand with me in what came to feel, by the end of the day, like a deeply personal attack.

That day was a lonely one for me. Most of my closest friends in my online community, the people I know and love and who I know love me, were largely silent. I know they were there, listening and watching that ugly “conversation” unfold on Facebook, but most of them said nothing. They had their reasons; and those reasons were good, sensible, respectable, rational reasons. I certainly don’t blame my peers for not leaping into such a divisive public exchange. Had I been in their shoes, I suspect I would have made the exact same choice.

Yet at the same time, I felt abandoned and even a little bit betrayed. While I certainly hadn’t expected everyone to agree with me, I had expected they would defend not my stance on the issue necessarily, but me, as their friend and fellow human being. I hadn’t expected to feel so alienated and alone and for that to hurt so much.

I suspect that’s what Paul was feeling when he wrote this at the end of his second letter to Timothy: “The first time I was brought before the judge, no one came with me. Everyone abandoned me.” (2 Timothy 4:16).

In those two simple sentences I hear Paul’s sorrow, loneliness, disappointment and defeat. I hear what I felt that day on Facebook.

Yet in Paul’s next words to Timothy, he says something important: He acknowledges that although he was abandoned by his earthly friends, God stood with him, strengthening him, rescuing him and delivering him “from every evil attack.” (2 Timothy 4:17-18)

Clearly my situation on Facebook was markedly different from Paul’s. At the same time, though, Paul’s words helped me understand that God does not abandon us, even when it looks as though we’ve been abandoned by everyone else.

What’s more, God does not leave us, even when we are wrong. God stands with us, even when we go wildly astray.

God loves us unabashedly, no matter what.

When I feel utterly and completely alone, it helps to remember God’s promise: he is with us, always, even until the end of time. God stands with us, strengthening us in our weakness, rescuing us from defeat, pulling us from the abyss of loneliness.

God is with us always. We are never as alone as we might feel in the moment.

 

God Chose YOU

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Often when I tell my faith story or give my testimony, I use phrases like, “When I returned to God…” or “When I came back to God…” or even, “When God found me.” That’s the way I’ve understood my story: I was estranged from God for twenty years, and then I slowly came back to him. Recently, though, I’ve begun to realize that while my understanding of that process isn’t wrong, necessarily, it’s also not the whole story.

The whole story is encapsulated in this one simple verse from John:

“You didn’t choose me. I chose you.” (John 15:16)

Sometimes I forget that God does the choosing; I forget that he chose me as his beloved child even before I took my first wailing breath on this earth.

I forget that the door into his love and grace was open from the get-go, a standing, open invitation to me – to all of us.

Remember the story of the prodigal son? We typically pay a lot of attention to the son who returns in that story. We relate to the son’s need to seek forgiveness; we see ourselves in his act of returning to his father and his home.

But think about the father in that story for a moment. Sure, he comes out to greet his son and to welcome him back after his long hiatus. But the truth is, the door to the father’s house was always open; all those years, the invitation still stood. The father greeted his lost son with open arms, but that son had long been chosen as beloved by him; that fact never changed.

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You are so loved

I tend to give myself a fair amount of credit for turning back to God after a twenty-year hiatus. If I’m not careful, I can easily slip into the misguided belief that I chose God. But as I mentioned earlier, that view is a subtle misrepresentation of the story.

The fact is, God does the choosing; each one of us is already chosen, right from the start. That invitation into grace, into the God-with-us life, is waiting for us on the day we are born. Our role is to say “yes.”