What “With” Means to Me

The night is dark. It is that time of night when “evening” is no longer a descriptor and early morning is hours away. I toss and turn with fever or stomach trouble or a heartache of some kind. The circumstances have changed over the years. I feel a presence in the room, and she lays a cool hand on my forehead. It is my mother, keeping vigil, with me.

I’m older and some middle school pains are too private for even my mother to share. There aren’t words to describe them fully so I keep them in my heart. I lie in bed with her sleeping, not knowing, in the next room. I peer at the glowing red numbers of my bedside clock. The single digit hour blinks at me with minutes ticking away as I lay, still awake. I scoot over toward the wall my bed rests against and pat the bed next to me. “Jesus?,” my heart whispers, “are you there?” He doesn’t speak. I still can see nothing but the blinking red of numbers. But I feel His Presence, as He sits on the bed, with me.

I’m even older now, the decades blinking away like those clock hours. I’ve laid in my own bed in the darkest of night hearing the sleeping sighs of my husband beside me. Or sometimes, in the darkest times, feeling him pull me close in those single digit hours, keeping vigil with me. But I still know, that all I must do is whisper, and Jesus will still sit with me.

I have been around long enough to know that others have a different picture of the Jesus Who sat on the side of my bed with me and Who continues to walk with me. I see a beautiful sunrise as His exuberant smile saying, “What do you think?” Others see a collection of precise scientific data with no precise design sprinkled across a sky. I see a Baby born to walk with the poor and forgotten, with the rich and misunderstood, with the ones who welcomed Him, with the ones who were embarrassed by Him and with the ones who betrayed Him. And so many, if they believe He existed at all, believe He died as just another misguided savior of the Jews who failed to accomplish His purpose.

In the world of religion, there is no other Deity that bends to humanity. deigning to be with them. He loves us too much to stop all the pain begun by evil, invited into paradise by His own creation. That time is coming, of course. For now, instead of acting as a genie, waving a magic wand and giving us all we think we want, He hovers close and says, “I’m here. I am with you.” In the pain, in the joy, in the dark, in the light — He is here.

You can have your Santa Claus who does miraculous feats in one night to provide the wishes of children around the world (though it seems, by news reports, he might be limited to the Western world). You can have your science (so-called) that explains away the spiritual with numbers and data contrived and reworked over centuries by humans who share the same flesh as you do. You can keep searching for an elusive nirvana or keep fulfilling the whims of a god who perpetually frowns upon you as you fulfill his ever-increasing demands. You can ignore all semblance of religion and collect icons of success in the form of money, power and fame. As for me, when pain wakes me in those single digit hours, or joy grips me in hours of beauty and love, I want that God Who bends to be with me.

This isn’t the first Christmas where the darkness seems it will linger forever. Readers will remember the setting of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Our very Christmas carols were written against the backdrop of war and death. The first Christmas began when two poor Jews huddled in a cave for housing animals and laid their newborn in the feeding trough while Rome ruled with an iron fist.

The Bible gives us the word Emmanuel. It means, “God with us”. I don’t have to get into a theological debate to show the difference between my Jesus and any other deity. This is the essential difference. My God is with me and with whomever else invites Him.

Long before the group of shepherds visited the Baby Jesus in that pungent cave, another shepherd wrote a song while watching his own sheep in the same area where the Savior would be born. He might not have envisioned the scope of Emmanuel at that time, but he knew a little about the Lord being with him. He called Him a Shepherd. A Shepherd who leads, follows, but always, is with.

With

As I follow the Shepherd, He walks ahead
Where the waters are still and the pastures are green.
He makes me lie down, and He restores my soul;
I need only follow in the paths as He leads. 

Sometimes I look back and His mercy follows
I contemplate His abundant goodness and care.
When foes hover close, He protects from behind;
As I eat plenty from the table He prepares. 

But sometimes I’m in the valley of shadows
As darkness covers close and thick, I lose the light.
I cannot see ahead to follow His steps.
When I turn behind, the blackness stays my sight. 

When everywhere I turn, He is not in view,
When I think He’s gone and His Presence is a myth, 
He isn’t up ahead, nor is He behind;
Then, my heart knows that, in the valley, He is with. 

When He leads, I follow, eager to obey,
When He follows me, I feel His guiding eye. 
But when shadows block my view
And darkness closes in,
In the valley of the shadow, He is with. 

Now, in 2020, I take solace in the fact that, no matter what, He is with me. And that He will be with you, too, if you ask Him. Because that is the God He is.