Once Joseph resolved to divorce his “unfaithful,” pregnant fiancée, I imagine he anticipated a regretful night of ceiling gazing. His future with Mary was a closed door thanks to some other man. But that night, an angel visited him in a dream and turned his world upside-down… again. “What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit… and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins,” the angel announced.

There was no “other man”—this was a miracle. And it was a miracle that echoed a prophecy in the book of Isaiah, about a virgin who gives birth to a son: Immanuel—God with us.

Joseph had known the stories of the Bible since he was a child. He knew how the Old Testament God showed his presence: in a pillar of cloud and fire, in acts of judgment and acts of grace, in a quiet whisper. But now God himself was unfurling in Mary’s womb! Joseph could have scoffed. Instead, he ran straight back to Mary to set things right.

So often in Advent we anticipate the sweet baby, circled by animals, sung by angels. But does a shiver go up our spine at the import of his birth, his name, his purposeful proximity? When Joseph wrapped the tiny boy in scraps of cloth, he held a 700-year-old promise come true.

It was a promise fulfilled so that God could be with us. Not in an earthquake, or fire, or maelstrom of judgment. Not to point us to the only exit we deserve, the one marked hell. No, Jesus came to be “God with us” in grace. To nestle in the arms of his flawed earthly parents. To scuff along dusty paths instructing his slow-to-learn disciples. To heal the hopeless. To face a Roman execution and bear his Father’s holy anger over our sin. To be laid in a tomb. To break free of death so that he could be “God with us”… even those of us in the 21st century.

But surely God is farther away than ever? We can’t approach his holy mountain with his Old Testament people, trembling at his fire. We can’t hear the thunder or the whisper of his voice. We can’t even tiptoe into that stable with the shepherds and hope for the child’s eyes to turn our way. Is he really “God with us?”

He is! And it should send an awed shiver up our spines. He is not just God with us, but God in us—as we eat and drink of his true body and blood in his Holy Supper. As he enters our hearts and makes us his children in baptism. As he thunders and whispers to us in his Word.

This Advent, remember how God entered the human race to be with us. Remember how he lives in you. Remember how he is coming again so you can be with him in heaven, where he will be close enough to lean over and wipe away every tear from your eyes.