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From the Advent Archives: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

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Read Matthew 1:18-23

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Then Isaiah said: ‘Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.’” (Isaiah 7:13-14)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “From the Advent Archives: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

It is hard to put into words the fear, anxiety, sadness, depression, and confusion that ran through most people’s minds at the close of this past Friday, December 14. By the end of the day, after watching the drama unfold on live TV, we learned that 28 people had been shot and killed at an elementary school in Connecticut. Of the 28, twenty were children between the ages of six and seven years old.

Oftentimes, in tragedies such as this, people ask, “Where is God in all of this?” After all, what kind of God would allow children to be born and grow up in a world that is seemingly as evil as this one? What kind of God would create “monsters” who go out and destroy the innocent? What kind of God would be so cold as to not intervene when the lives of the innocent are at stake?

These are all valid and good questions to ask. It is also safe to say that there really aren’t any answers that fully satisfy our need to understand how evil and God coexist. I could offer a ton of Christian clichés that sound good off the cuff, but that would only simplify something very complex. So, rather than offering easy answers to really tough questions, I will provide one of many possible ways in which we can reflect on what happened and what our response will be.

It is very easy for us to look only at where we don’t see God and miss where we *are* seeing God. For instance, we look at someone like Adam Lanza [the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School] and see his actions as proof of God failing to be with us. Yet we fail to see that God was with the principal who lunged at Adam and became the first to be shot and killed. God was with the teachers as they did everything they could — including covering children with their own bodies — to save their students. God was with the first responders.

God is also with those now looking at ways to address the societal issues that allow people like Adam to fall through the cracks unnoticed until it is too late. When Jesus called His disciples to care for “the least of these,” that included those who suffer from mental illness. Yet, in our society, mental illness is stigmatized, and our health care system often doesn’t provide affordable ways for people suffering from mental illness to get the kind of care (not just drugs and a locked asylum door) that they need.

The fact of the matter is that bad things do happen. People have free will and choose to do all sorts of things that God would not wish for anyone to choose. But aside from that, we still have a God who loves us, a God who is with us, a God who provides hope even in the darkest circumstances.

The Nativity story is a reminder of the hope of Emmanuel — God with us. This God came to earth and became one of us; this God put others first and sought to be present with all people regardless of their status or condition. This God was crucified by God’s own creation and resurrected back to life despite being put to death. This God is the same God who was present with the teachers, administrators, and first responders who worked desperately to save as many as possible, risking their own lives in the process. This God is the same God who is turning the media’s attention from labeling Adam “the face of evil” to examining how people like Adam have not received the care they needed.

While we cannot definitively answer why bad things like this happen — beyond the obvious realities of free will, broken systems, and human sin — we certainly can still have the hope of Emmanuel. Let us not forget that God never leaves us nor forsakes us. We can know that God is with us, and we can let God guide us to be instrumental in sparking the changes needed in our communities, the very changes that could protect other children and people from acts of evil.

Let us welcome Emmanuel into this world by seeing God’s revelation in us. We have been equipped to be the presence of God in the lives of those in need, whether they are children in distress or the unnoticed Adams slipping through the cracks. Let us be like the writer of Hebrews who confidently proclaims, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid” (Hebrews 13:6).

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
We need not look any further than our own hearts, and the hearts of those around us, to find God.

PRAYER
Lord, I thank You for always being present with me, and thank You for revealing Your presence in me. Let me witness to that Good News! Amen.

© 2012 Rev. Todd R. Lattig. All rights reserved.
First published December 19, 2012.

Devotional

SACRED SIGNS OF SUBVERSION, Part 21: Tree of Life

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Read Deuteronomy 21:22–23; Matthew 27:32–44

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right.” (1 Peter 2:24 NLT)

Symbols carry memory and meaning far beyond words. The Church has always leaned on them—sometimes hidden in plain sight, sometimes dismissed or distorted. Yet the most powerful symbols are those that subvert the world’s expectations and draw us back to the radical heart of the Gospel. In this series, we’ll look closer at the sacred signs that shock, unsettle, and ultimately call us deeper into Christ.

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 21: Tree of Life” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 21: Tree (The Cross). Before the Cross ever hung in sanctuaries or appeared on necklaces, it was a tree—cut down, stripped, and reshaped into an instrument of terror. Rome didn’t use crosses for spiritual symbolism; they used them to maintain order. A crucified body was a message to the masses: This is what happens if you defy us. The Cross was state-sponsored intimidation—public, humiliating, and brutally effective.

But long before Rome weaponized wood, Israel cherished another sacred tree: the Tree of Life in Eden. In Jewish tradition, this tree represented more than immortality. It symbolized humanity’s unbroken relationship with God—wholeness, union, divine vitality. In Kabbalah, the Tree of Life becomes a map of divine presence flowing into creation, the sefirot expressing God’s wisdom, compassion, strength, and glory. The Tree of Life is not mythic decoration—it is the architecture of existence, the very structure through which God’s life nourishes the world.

And the first tragedy of Scripture is exile from that Tree. Not because God is petty or punitive, but because God grieves what humanity has chosen. Genesis shows us not an enraged deity forcing humanity out, but a God who laments what must happen. If humanity, fractured by sin, had reached out and eaten from the Tree of Life, we would have eternalized our brokenness. We would have lived forever in sin. God could not and would not permit that. So the exile becomes protection, not condemnation—divine grief wrapped in divine wisdom. God’s heart breaks, yet God acts to preserve the possibility of healing. And from that moment on, God begins preparing another path to life: a different Tree, a different Garden, a different way home. The banishment from Eden is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of redemption.

This sets the stage for the scandal of the Cross.Deuteronomy 21 says, “Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” So when Jesus is nailed to that dead tree, many concluded He could not be the Messiah. The logic seemed airtight: if the Messiah is blessed and the Cross is a curse, then a crucified man cannot be the Messiah. Yet God interrupts that interpretation entirely. While the world points and says, “He hangs on a tree—He is cursed,” God effectively answers, “Who told you He was cursed? That is your conclusion, not Mine. This is not the curse of God. This is who I AM—entering your suffering, not abandoning it.”

And here is where the doctrinal waters often get stirred. Some have taken the temple-sacrifice metaphors of the New Testament and built an entire system around the idea that God demanded Jesus’ death to be satisfied. But the Cross is not divine punishment demanded by God—it is divine protest against the violence humanity directs at itself and at anyone who embodies God’s justice and compassion. God did not put Jesus on the Cross. Human sin did. Human fear did. Human cruelty did. The temple language is descriptive, not prescriptive; it uses the theological vocabulary available at the time to articulate a mystery far deeper than sacrifice-as-payment. Jesus does not die because God needs blood. Jesus dies because the world cannot tolerate love in its purest form—and God chooses to meet us there, not because God requires it, but because we do.

Jesus is not cursed by God; Jesus is God entering the very place humanity believes God refuses to go. And once that is seen, everything changes. The Cross is no longer the Tree of curse; it becomes the Tree of Life replanted. A living tree is cut down and turned into an instrument of death, yet God transforms that dead tree into the conduit of eternal life. Not because the wood itself has magic power, but because the One who hangs upon it is the Source of Life the first tree symbolized.

The early Church fathers recognized this transformation. They wrote of the Cross as the “Tree of Life whose fruit never decays,” the wood that heals the wound of the first tree, the branches that stretch across the world offering shelter. In Christ, the exile from Eden ends. The separation is bridged. The divine flow returns. The Cross doesn’t stand as a symbol of divine wrath but as a symbol of divine reclamation—God taking the worst thing humanity could do and turning it into the place where salvation blossoms.

This also means the Cross unmasks every system built on domination, fear, and cruelty. It confronts the powers—religious or political—that justify harm “for the greater good.” Jesus didn’t die on the Tree to reinforce the systems that killed Him. Jesus died on the Tree to liberate us from them. The Tree of Rome becomes the Tree of Life restored. The instrument of execution becomes the instrument of communion. The place of death becomes the place where the universe is stitched back together.

Resurrection is not an afterthought; it is the releafing of the Tree. The Cross blossoms. Life flows. The gates of the Garden open once more. The way home stands revealed—not through dominance or fear, but through the unfailing love of God.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The Cross is the dead tree God made live again—so the world could live again too.

PRAYER
Life-Giving God, You turn instruments of death into branches of healing. You uproot the curse we created and plant the Tree of Life in its place. Draw us into the flow of Your mercy. Heal our separation. Break our allegiance to every power that harms. Make us people of resurrection life. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 20: Halo/Circle

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Read Matthew 17:1–8

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NLT)

Symbols carry memory and meaning far beyond words. The Church has always leaned on them—sometimes hidden in plain sight, sometimes dismissed or distorted. Yet the most powerful symbols are those that subvert the world’s expectations and draw us back to the radical heart of the Gospel. In this series, we’ll look closer at the sacred signs that shock, unsettle, and ultimately call us deeper into Christ.

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 20: Halo / Circle” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 20: Halo / Circle. Funny how halos show up in all the wrong ways. One of my favorite examples comes from Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I. Brooks plays a fugitive hiding out as a waiter in a Jewish restaurant—only to end up serving the disciples in the Upper Room. After taking their orders and being shushed, Leonardo da Vinci barges in, insisting the scene won’t work unless they’re all seated on the same side of the table. He rearranges them, steps back, shouts “Freeze!”—and in that instant, Brooks is caught holding his serving tray perfectly behind Jesus’ head, forming an accidental halo. It’s absurd, irreverent, perfectly Brooks… and strangely revealing.

Because halos in art were meant to show divine radiance—yet over time, they’ve become props. Decorative. Harmless. A safe symbol that demands nothing and reveals nothing. But nothing in Scripture suggests that divine radiance is safe or sterile. When Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, His face blazes like the sun, His clothes turn white with unfiltered glory, and the disciples collapse in fear. Holiness does not politely glow. Holiness burns. Holiness exposes. Holiness reveals injustice and disrupts every false peace upheld by power.

Michelangelo understood this unsettling quality when he carved Moses with horns. Yes, it came from a mistranslation, but the effect was striking: true holiness is nothing like the sanitized halos we hang above our nativity sets. It is unpredictable, untamed, and always upends the status quo.

But halos also hint at something deeper—the circle. The shape of belonging. The shape of boundaries. The shape of who’s inside and who’s out. Humanity is always drawing circles: worthiness, purity, identity, doctrine, comfort. And the Church has drawn plenty of them too. We have fenced pulpits, fenced communions, fenced holiness itself.

But Jesus keeps redrawing those circles until they break open.

He touches lepers.
Blesses children.
Lifts women.
Eats with outcasts.
Honors Gentiles.
Invites the excluded.
Calls disciples from the margins.

Every circle drawn to keep someone out becomes the very circle Jesus expands.

I think about my friend Mark Miller—composer, justice-seeker, prophetic soul—whose song Draw the Circle Wide has become one of my favorites. Its simplicity is its brilliance. “Draw the circle wide… draw it wider still.” In one line, Mark captures the entire Gospel. God does not shrink circles; God expands them until every person knows they belong.

And yet, halos have often been co-opted by purity politics. Holiness became a behavior to perform, an image to maintain, a glow to admire. Respectability replaced righteousness. The Church began rewarding people who looked holy—those who fit the image—rather than those who lived compassionate, courageous, Christ-shaped lives. But Jesus never once pursued respectability. He never polished His radiance. He never curated His glow. He let His holiness disrupt rather than impress.

Still, the halo’s circular shape whispers a deeper truth. The circle is one of the oldest sacred forms in human history—no beginning, no end. The shape of resurrection. Of covenant. Of completeness. Of shalom. Scripture describes God’s glory in circular imagery: rainbows, wheels within wheels, arcs of light. And Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that we are being transformed “from glory to glory”—drawn again and again into divine wholeness. The circle of holiness doesn’t just surround Christ; it gathers us too.

Put everything together and the symbol becomes clear:

Halos are not awards for the flawless.
Circles are not fences for the worthy.
Radiance is not a performance.
Wholeness is not a possession.

Holiness is not about shining above others—
it is about drawing others into the light.

Holiness widens every circle until those once pushed to the margins find themselves at home in its glow. Holiness lifts those the world overlooks. Holiness gathers, restores, and refuses to close.

And maybe that’s the real scandal of the halo: not that it crowns the holy, but that it invites the whole world into God’s radiance.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
True holiness doesn’t draw circles to keep people out—it draws circles of light to bring people home.

PRAYER
Radiant God, draw us into Your transforming light. Break the small circles we cling to and widen our hearts with Your compassion. Make us people who reflect Your glory with courage and welcome. Shape us into a community where all can find their place within Your circle of grace. Amen.

[i] Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).