IRL

With our church hosting a Living Nativity it got me thinking about Emmanuel, God with us ... not as a reflection of the past, but as a representation of our present. He came and was with His people then, but He remains with His people still today.

I haven't heard the term IRL used in quite a while (In Real Life). Usually used when the Internet boom and social-like media began with chat rooms and e-mail, people used to refer to doing things IRL or meeting each other IRL.

However after reading Oswald Chambers the other day, he mentioned something that made me reflect yet again on the difference between the virtual and the real. Let me try to explain my point ... or his point the way it impacted me:

"We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, "Oh well, I can't help it. I prayed and things didn't turn out right anyway. So I'm simply going to give up on everything." Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!" - Oswald Chambers

If our relationship with God and how we treat Him is different than other areas of our life, what does that say about our faith? If we treat God as if he were an Internet acquaintance that we don't really know IRL, then God is not God to us. He's merely an attempted stop-gap measure to get us by - and when He doesn't appear to meet our worldly needs, we try to find another stop-gap.

This scene isn't just a reenactment of a story, but a representation of a Truth that is more real than anything else around us.

May you and I find Christmas this season - may you and I seek Christmas this season.

Blessings,
~Matthew