It Starts Small

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

I think today is a great day to pause for a moment and go back to Isaiah 7:14. We touch on this briefly. This scripture is part of a song sung this time of year.

Today, we will look at a couple of the song’s verses and talk about what Christmas means. I like the opening verse. It captures the heart of Christmas. “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Emmanuel means “God with us.” The prophet Isaiah promised this would happen 700 years before the birth of Jesus the Messiah.

¹⁴ Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14

Isaiah foretold these words as God prepared to send his people into captivity and exile in Babylon. What is there to be hopeful for when facing exile, when facing hardship, and trial?

God promises a child in the darkness. We need a child in our darkness too. But we need not just any child, the Christ child, Emmanuel, God with us.

I listened to the words of this song. I remembered the setting of Isaiah 7. I was struck by the sadness of the lyrics, “That mourns in lonely exile here.”

The past few years have had me in mourning and sorrow. There were joys, time with my family and friends, but there were also deep wounds.

What was your year like? Was it hard? What are we to do? Where can we find hope?

What most of us probably want this Christmas is not a toy but family. What we all want is to feel loved and to love others too. I think that extends to our relationship with God. We want to know God loves us. We understand this because God stepped down into this world. He came to be with us, Emmanuel, God with us.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

As we wrestle with conflict, mourning, desperation and shame, what we need most is the “Day-spring” to “come and cheer,” to “disperse the gloomy clouds of night.” “Dayspring” comes from older translations of the Bible and is a fancy way of saying, “Dawn.” We need the Son of God to be the sun in our gloomy lives. If you are feeling gloomy this Christmas, look to Jesus, our Sonrise.

In the gospel of Luke, Zechariah, prophesies that his son will prepare the way for the Lord. The Lord is going to forgive sins. Why will God forgive?

⁷⁸ Because of our God’s merciful compassion,
the dawn from on high will visit us
⁷⁹ to shine on those who live in darkness
and the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Luke 1:78-79

Some of us are are caught in exile. Our lives are in the gloom. We are walking in darkness and in the shadow of death, but God promises a sunrise of peace. The Lord promises that the dawn is coming.

For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor, a lifetime.
Weeping may stay overnight,
but there is joy in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

So after a long hard night of suffering and loss, we are at our most vulnerable moment. Rescue crests the hill with the sunrise. Our morning, our rescue has come. Our deliverance has arrived.

Our dawn has come in the birth of a tiny baby boy. But our rescue is completed on another hill called Calvary. There, the Christ child, grown into a man, paid the ultimate sacrifice. He delivered us from doom and gloom through forgiveness and grace. Jesus is the greatest gift of all. He has come to give us peace with each other and peace with God.

Luke talks about the tender mercy of God. God feels tender mercy towards us. God knows what it is like to need mercy. God put himself in a position of needing mercy. Who would have thought that the solution to a year like this one was a vulnerable baby boy? Most of us probably feel we need a better world. But what if we had “God with us?” What if God came into our world to bring us peace, to bring morning to all people?

O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Tonight is dark. It is nighttime. We hold up our candles in our case because we believe in the light of tomorrow’s morning. We believe in the daybreak, our Day-spring, Jesus. Even in a year like this one, I feel hopeful in immense loss and pain because morning is coming. Jesus promises that he has already dealt with sin. He will also deal with it once and for all when he returns. That an even greater sunrise is coming, and God will be with us forever. Look to Jesus! The morning is coming!

© Kimberlee Smith 2025 http://www.itstartssmall.com All rights reserved.