God With Us

By Jessie Fox

Imagine not being able to communicate your basic needs with your own mother.

Imagine not being able to communicate your joys and pains with your brothers and sisters.

Imagine your uncle leaving to another country, and no one ever telling you if he will come back or not.

Imagine your mother picking up the phone and horrified looks come across her face as she begins to weep. But you don’t know why...until you attend the funeral of your brother the next day. No one told you.

Imagine the life of a deaf person in Honduras.

Deafness separates them from communication.

Deafness separates them from family.

Deafness separates them from community.

But deafness does not separate them from knowing the love of Jesus.

In the Old Testament the Israelites were separated from God’s presence with a veil that separated the Holy of Holies in the temple.  And a “normal” human, like you and I couldn’t ever enter His presence. Only the high priest could enter and only once a year, and never without blood (Exodus 30:10).

Sinfulness separated them from God.

 …Until God entered our sinful world.  The Creator of the universe left His family, left His community (with the Trinity), and left His face-to-face communication with the Father.  For what? To enter our world, so that we would no longer be separated – that we would never be alone again.  He became “God-with-us”, Emmanuel.  And His death on the cross tore the veil that once separated us from Him (Mark 15:38).

My prayer this Christmas, for each of the deaf that have so often felt the sting of loneliness, is that they may feel and experience Emmanuel, God with them, like never before!

2 of our Honduran Deaf missionaries
teaching (in drama form) the story of
Christ's birth to 2 Deaf children
at a village program