Mary Did You Know?

One of the favorite songs I get to share in this Christmas season is Mary Did You Know?

One line that I highlight before I sing the song are:

“Mary did you know… that when you kissed your little baby, that you kissed the face of God?”

Do you remember when you first came to realize that Jesus was God?

I was really shocked and amazed. Still am. And then, when I read that Jesus was the Creator, that put it over the top.

“In the beginning the Word (Jesus) already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.” John 1:1-4 NLT

I love the phrase in Colossians 1:16:

“Everything was created through him and for him.”

Some other translations render it: “All things were created by him and for him” and a few others: “by him and in him”. I discovered the meaning of life when I read that verse.

I was created by Jesus for Jesus. You were created by Jesus for Jesus. Your and my life will only make sense and find fulfillment in connection to, and in relationship with this One who made us for himself. Yeshua (Jesus) which literally means “I AM Salvation”.

Pretty cool, huh?

Which brings us to the last, and probably often misunderstood, line in the song:

“…This sleeping child you’re holding is the Great I AM.”

As many of you know “I AM” was the Name that God revealed himself as, particularly to Moses in the burning bush incident (Ex. 3:14). This is God’s eternal Name. (By the way, this is the same as Yahweh, Jehovah, YHWH, or Yehowah – we don’t really know how to say it since the scribes left out the vowels lest anyone blaspheme the name. In most Bibles I AM is rendered as LORD in all caps and appears over 6000 times.

I don’t pretend to grasp the full significance of His Name, I AM. I know that, as the LORD himself has said, “it is wonderfully beyond our comprehension”. And this is good news! No one you have ever met or heard about has God figured out. It is greater still than the most exhilarating revelation that you have ever had into his nature thus far. Isn’t that great?

And while his Name is wonderfully profound, it is also very practical as I have discovered. As the LORD progressively reveals himself throughout Scripture, He pairs his name I AM with things that he actually is for us. To Abraham he revealed himself as Jehovah Jirah “I AM your Provider/Provision”, to others…

O my goodness. I just realized I was about to recreate from scratch the same blog post I made years ago. I did a search and fond it. Here is a link to that blog: https://daniellovett.com/2012/04/25/i-am-salvation-the-name-of-jesus-yashua/