God With Us was written as part of The Gift, a collection of Christmas songs designed to be simple, singable, and accessible. It’s a song that invites everyone to join in with its call-and-response structure, it’s almost an instant song that can be picked up and sung straight away.

At the heart of it is one extraordinary word: Immanuel. We hear it often at Christmas, but perhaps it’s easy to forget what it really means. It’s a title drawn from a prophecy given hundreds of years before Christ, through the prophet Isaiah:

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” which means ‘God with us’. (Matthew 1:23, echoing Isaiah 7:14)

Three small words – God with us – yet they contain a truth so vast that it reshapes our understanding of who God is.

When Jesus walked the earth, this wasn’t a distant or abstract idea. It was tangible, physical, real. You could touch Him, speak to Him, look into His eyes. Those who didn’t fit anywhere els; the outcasts, the poor, the rejected, found that they belonged with Him. They knew He was with them, not just as a teacher or a healer, but as one who shared their suffering and their humanity.

That’s the picture this song seeks to paint; a God who doesn’t stand far off, but who draws near. A God who enters our pain, who knows our struggles, and who shares our story.

There’s a line in the song that says:

“One of a hated race, stung by the prejudice…”

That line was written as a reminder of Jesus’ own context, born into a people who have known centuries of suffering and rejection. Under Roman rule, the Jewish people were despised and oppressed. Jesus Himself experienced that. He knows what it is to be misunderstood, to be treated unjustly, to suffer.

That’s what makes the message of Christmas so powerful, God knows, because He has been with us. He has walked where we walk, felt what we feel, and entered into the grittiness of real human life.

And that’s the real wonder of Christmas. Beyond the tinsel and nostalgia, it’s the story of God with us, in our joy and in our pain, in our mess and in our hope. It’s a truth to hold on to, not just at Christmas, but every day of the year.