That's what his name Immanuel means. "God WITH us." With us in our suffering.

I grabbed an unknown book off my shelf on my way to the hospital with Covid. Someone had given it to me at least a decade ago, and it had sat on my shelf for years, unread. The title caught my eye, and so I stuffed it in my bag. It was With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Descipleship, by South African Pastor Peter Storey. I started reading that first day, and immediately burst into tears...