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God’s gift of Immanuel

Ron Ferguson

Not long ago, Lucy Ofuti, Mennonite Central Committee Uganda’s office assistant, performed in the Charles Mulekwa play The Hands of my People at Uganda’s national theatre. The drama tells of Nango, a young African woman whose parents require her to undergo circumcision against her will. They do this to make her an acceptable marriage candidate for a rich old man in their village. Her parents have their eyes set upon the hefty bride price the man will pay. Nango, however, loves a poor young man and wants to marry him without undergoing the tribe’s ceremonial circumcision.

After Nango’s circumcision, she develops a severe infection and becomes critically ill. Her boyfriend tries to sneak into her house to visit her, but Nango’s mother intercepts him in the yard and refuses him entrance. Nango recognizes his voice and calls to him from her sickbed. As the mother forces the boyfriend out of the yard, he cries, “Nango, I am with you!”

In Africa, certain English words are loaded with implied meaning. One such word is that simple preposition “with” in Nango’s boyfriend’s statement, “I am with you.” How many times have we witnessed people in North America, supposedly in a relationship of some sort, sharing the same physical space but little else? Nango’s boyfriend, on the other hand, was expressing a togetherness that did not require his physical presence. He was telling Nango that he shared her pain and suffering, that he valued and cherished her life, that his well-being was bound up with hers, that he had her best interests at heart.

It was not too far from Uganda, either geographically or culturally, that God reminded Joseph of Isaiah’s prophecy that the Messiah would be called Immanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). When God chose to be with humankind in the person of Jesus, it was not a superficial arrangement. It included all the deep meaning Nango’s boyfriend communicated to her, and much more.

In Christ, God chooses to be with us, redemptively invested in our lives to the point of taking upon Himself the guilt and punishment for our sin. Jesus promised the same quality of togetherness to us when He told the disciples He would be with them always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). In Jesus, our Creator is with us in a depth and significance we have not yet even imagined.

This article was distributed Oct. 25, 1996 as a Mennonite Central Committee news release.

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Last modified December 6, 2000.

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