The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

In Jesus, God took up residence with regular human beings. “Moved into the neighborhood.” Bought the house next door and unpacked his boxes. This is why metaphors are helpful, isn’t it? It’s the only way we can almost understand what John felt and was trying to say: that the God who is powerful enough to create Everything chose—chooses—to leave the safety and comfort of some grand cathedral in a distant corner of the universe, to come live here, next door. To you. This is not an appearance just long enough to make some announcement or to clean things up. To live.

And if that’s true, then God lives in your neighborhood too. Maybe not in someone named Jesus, but in every person who was created in God’s image. I think that’s all of us.

It’s our lives—the words that come out of our mouths, and the way we use our money, and every time you’re more compassionate than strictly necessary—that carry the presence of God into the neighborhoods of our lives. Into our kitchens and our cluttered garages, your kids’ messy bedroom. Into that side area where the garbage cans go and you hope no one else ever walks through there. Into the life of that annoying guy who still has political signs in his front yard. Into the parts of the city you mostly avoid.

Here’s what I learned from Jesus, John says: God isn’t some disembodied spirit that watches, or judges, or even sympathizes, as we worry and lose our way and struggle. This God is in human life, in a way that is close-up and intimate and long-term. God became human. God becomes part of all the things God loves. Nature, people, neighborhoods. It’s just what God does.

God doesn’t just speak love. God does love–by coming to live this life with us. God has been us. God is us. And that changes everything.

PRAYER: Come to us again, life-changing God. We need you. Our families need hope. Our communities need not to fear. Our world needs peace. And so we ask you to show us again. Come and open our eyes to all the ways you live among us. Help us to know that Emmanuel, God with us, means not just for one day, but for every day.

PROMPT: What is the place in your life, right now, where you would be most surprised to find God already fully immersed there? Is there a place that God has been trying to get your attention about, asking you to come alongside?

John 1:14