“"Comfort, comfort my people," says your God. "Speak comfortably to Jerusalem; and call out to her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received of Yahweh's hand double for all her sins." The voice of one who calls out, "Prepare the way of Yahweh in the wilderness! Make a level highway in the desert for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain. Yahweh's glory shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it."”
The first word God speaks to a people in exile is comfort. He says it twice.
That is not what you would expect. These are people who had been warned and did not listen, who lost their city and their temple and ended up far from home. If anyone had earned a lecture, it was them. Instead God tells the prophet to speak tenderly to them, and to tell them the hard season is over and the debt is paid.
There is a season for hard words. This was not it. God knows the difference, which is more than most of us can say. We tend to keep pressing when someone is already flattened.
Then the tone shifts and a voice starts calling out to get the road ready. In the ancient world, when a king traveled, crews went ahead to fill the potholes and level the ruts so the journey could be made. Isaiah takes that picture and makes it enormous. Every valley lifted. Every mountain brought down. The rough places made smooth.
Here is the part worth sitting with. God is not asking us to make ourselves presentable before he arrives. He is the one doing the leveling. The valleys are raised and the mountains lowered by him, so that when he comes there is nothing left in the way.
What is rough in you right now? What ground in your life would have to be leveled for God to walk straight into it? Advent is a good season to name that honestly, not to fix it by force, but to hand it to the one who does the roadwork.
The comfort comes first. The road gets built after.
Talk About It Together
Speak gently to each other in this one. It is a day about tenderness.
- When have you needed comfort and gotten a lecture instead?
- What is the rough ground in your life right now?
- Who around you needs a comforting word from you this week?
Tonight’s Challenge
Say one genuinely comforting thing to someone who is worn out, and do not follow it with advice.
Prayer
Father, thank You that Your first word to people who had failed was comfort. Speak that word to us where we are tired and ashamed. Level the ground in us that keeps You at a distance. Make us gentle with the people around us, and prepare our hearts for Your coming. Amen.