The God Who Came Near


This has been a different holiday season for me; a tearful Thanksgiving, a deeply introspective Advent, a painful and yet joyful Christmas, and a New Year resolved to live for what counts.  My whole holiday season has been intertwined with losing a sweet friend; a sister.  From the discovery over Thanksgiving weekend that she was terribly ill, into her hospitalization, suffering, and unexpected death on December 14th, time was both agonizingly slow and painfully fast.  This holiday season of 2017 will forever be tied for our family to the loss of Vangile. 

I’m not a complete stranger to death.  I saw enough of it in my job as a nurse, and have of course experienced the loss of each of my grandparents.  But to lose someone here, so far away from her home, who was young, the same age as me, someone who held a special place in each of our hearts, was shattering.  And to lose her as we did, with so much sickness and suffering, and so quickly, almost without warning, was agonizing. 

We started celebrating Advent our first year here in China, and over these years it has become something that I treasure deeply.  The anticipation, meditating on the first coming of Christ, the lighting of candles, the retelling of the stories fills our hearts with wonder each year.  But this year was different and deeper than ever before.  It has always caused me to wonder, the strange way that the creator of the Universe broke into humanity.  A stable?  Shepherds?  Poor and unimportant parents?  I’ve always wondered; Why?  The God who created everything came to be born in absolute humility, as a helpless infant, into literal filth, with only the poorest of witnesses.  His life and ultimate death were marked by rejection, misunderstanding, abandonment, mockery, and abuse.  Walking the road of Advent and pondering these truths while I prayed over and cried out for my suffering friend, gave me a deeper appreciation for the ironic beauty of God’s plan.   “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”   The path my friend was on was truly full of suffering, but she wasn’t walking it alone.  Our Savior walked it first.  Although He was God, He became flesh.  And not just any version of flesh, he became the weakest version: an infant, and not just any infant.  He could have been born into wealth and acceptance.  Instead, he was born into poverty and rejection. He walked our road, he experienced our pain, he felt our emotions, he lived in our sickness, and he suffered our death.  He did all of that for us. 

Isaiah 53:4-5 “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed.”

As we lost Vangile, those truths sunk in deeper still, and I cling to them with all of my heart, breathing in the hope, and resting in the promises.  He walked before us into death and defeated it once and for all.  His suffering didn’t end in death, and ours doesn’t need to either.  He holds out the promise of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.  And instead of holding out these promises as a deity far off, separated, and unable to understand our struggles, he holds them out as the God who came near, entering into our condition, experiencing our struggles, fighting our temptations, and partaking of our death, but finally emerging victorious over sin and death, able to offer us life.  And because He loved us that deeply and fully, the hope that He offers can be trusted.  What a Savior. 

Phillippians 2:5-11 “Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father. “

Vangile believed in that hope with all of her heart, the love of Jesus was constantly; daily, pouring out of her heart and across her lips to everyone she met.  “God is so good”, was her incessant refrain.  This was what she said on the easy days, and on the hard ones.  She trusted the goodness of Jesus and knew that His love was to be trusted no matter how the circumstances appeared.  And now she is walking the streets of gold, free from disease, free from sorrow, and in the presence the Jesus she loves so well. 

Meditating along with Advent and celebrating the first coming of Christ always deepens my anticipation for His second coming.  This year more than ever it leaves me yearning for what is to come.  Someday I will see my friend again.  And even better than that, someday I will see my Jesus, the one who went to such lengths to rescue me. 


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Revelation 22:1-5 “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.  The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be anything cursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.  They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.  And night will be no more.  They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

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