Phil On .. 

God is with us
 The article relates to a recent musing on how a familiar phrase or passage from the bible can suddenly take on a new meaning many years after we first heard it.
 I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up in Cheadle. Not the Staffordshire Cheadle close to us here in Trentham, but the one in Cheshire, near Stockport. Strictly speaking, we lived on an estate that was equidistant from Cheadle, Heald Green and Cheadle Hulme .. but I digress.
As youngsters in the 1970’s, my sister and I were encouraged to attend a nearby Church of England church called Emmanuel. As I grew up and took up a place at Leicester University, I became someone who was not really fussed about staying loyal to an individual sub-section of the Christian church. That is how I found it quite easy to settle into the Methodist Church at Trentham .. whilst also enjoying the occasional service elsewhere. Last week, for example, I went to communion at the lovely CofE church in Stretton Grandison, Herefordshire where my son and daughter-in-law live. There I go again .. drifting away from the topic in hand, just like comedy sketches performed by Ronnie Corbett from his armchair!
It was engrained into us that Emmanuel (or Immanuel) meant ‘God with us’. I never really thought much about those words beyond the promise that, through the Holy Spirit, we could always count on God being with us as we made our way through life.
It was only last Christmas when reading a passage from the New Testament gospel of Matthew, (chapter one where the Angel visits Joseph), did it strike me that Christ living as a human on earth probably represents the greatest expression of ‘God with us’. It was a life that meant he was exposed to all the stresses, emotions and troubles of human life. Yet, uniquely, he was able to live without sin and so ultimately die for our sins, so that we could reach heaven blameless. Wow!