Thursday, December 7, 2017

Isaiah 40:3-5

A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and every mountain and hill be made low; and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ 

Coming home

There is wilderness without and within.

Wilderness is a trackless wasteland, a desert where the sky is always blue and a merciless sun scorches the rocks pale beige. A year can pass before a few drops of rain fall. It was through this that exiled Israel passed to return home from Babylon.

But there is also a more confusing wilderness, the twisted landscape of the human heart with all its conflicting emotions and the desires we imagine will lead to the joy for which we long. How to live? Which impulses and insights lead home?

For it is home that we want, home that we need. And home is to be in the Lord, in the Love who alone fills the soul. Home is to be filled with this Love so that we are one with this Mysterious One for whom we long.

But how are we to prepare a way, leveling the mountains and raising the ravines that get in the way of our journey back into the arms of the One Love who first sent us out on this earthly trek where we got lost?

And we get lost all the time.

All of life is a journey in search of home. But where is it, and how do we get there? The voice calls in our wilderness, “Prepare.” But how?

Maybe confusion and longing are the path. Maybe the way home is to admit to ourselves and each other that we do not know the way, that we need fellow travelers who accept our confusion and neediness because they, too, are struggling to find their way.

Maybe it is then that Love finds a space to breathe in us, and we realize home is closer than we thought.

Pr. David L. Miller