A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
The comma confusion always left me an impression of John as a lone voice crying in the wilderness for God’s people to repent and return to their Lord. Clarification reminds me that his invitation is rather to prepare in the wilderness a way for God. And that generates all kinds of other questions. Why in the wilderness? Why make straight a highway for God in the desert? Is there too much noise in our urban and suburban lives to hear a voice crying out, “Prepare the way?”
Or might we take “wilderness” as a metaphor, internalizing it to represent the chaos of our multiply-committed lives? Wilderness can suggest a stark emptiness. It can also evoke chaos, lack of order. Which description better fits your inner landscape today?
Perhaps preparing a way for God in our wilderness means locating the wild, untamed, unyielded places within ourselves. Those are often where God’s Spirit best meets our own. Or maybe it means that the messiest parts of our lives are where we are invited to prepare a way for the Lord, de-cluttering, clearing so as to access our most essential selves.
Wilderness is also something we need. We can get cut off from ourselvess, so distracted by our tasks and data, our commitments and the priorities others impose upon us, that we haven’t dealt with or dwelt in our own wilderness for quite some time. Advent offers a particular invitation to do that – to intensify the spiritual practices that connect us to God and to ourselves; to take some retreat time either daily or going on an actual retreat, to rediscover the desert within and straighten out the highway for God’s presence to enter our lives with more fullness.
Which of the many questions today resonated with you? Where did you feel yourself reacting?
What invitation to prayer do you discern out of your reflection on inner wilderness?
Where in yourself do you want to “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight a highway for God?”
A surprising image springs up in my mind: a community-service gang in orange jumpsuits, clearing up litter by the side of the highway. Not a bad Advent image for us to entertain today; we are all prisoners of our selves, to some degree, on the way to liberation. Why not clear a highway for our Liberator to hasten our freedom?
The comma confusion always left me an impression of John as a lone voice crying in the wilderness for God’s people to repent and return to their Lord. Clarification reminds me that his invitation is rather to prepare in the wilderness a way for God. And that generates all kinds of other questions. Why in the wilderness? Why make straight a highway for God in the desert? Is there too much noise in our urban and suburban lives to hear a voice crying out, “Prepare the way?”
Or might we take “wilderness” as a metaphor, internalizing it to represent the chaos of our multiply-committed lives? Wilderness can suggest a stark emptiness. It can also evoke chaos, lack of order. Which description better fits your inner landscape today?
Perhaps preparing a way for God in our wilderness means locating the wild, untamed, unyielded places within ourselves. Those are often where God’s Spirit best meets our own. Or maybe it means that the messiest parts of our lives are where we are invited to prepare a way for the Lord, de-cluttering, clearing so as to access our most essential selves.
Wilderness is also something we need. We can get cut off from ourselvess, so distracted by our tasks and data, our commitments and the priorities others impose upon us, that we haven’t dealt with or dwelt in our own wilderness for quite some time. Advent offers a particular invitation to do that – to intensify the spiritual practices that connect us to God and to ourselves; to take some retreat time either daily or going on an actual retreat, to rediscover the desert within and straighten out the highway for God’s presence to enter our lives with more fullness.
Which of the many questions today resonated with you? Where did you feel yourself reacting?
What invitation to prayer do you discern out of your reflection on inner wilderness?
Where in yourself do you want to “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight a highway for God?”
A surprising image springs up in my mind: a community-service gang in orange jumpsuits, clearing up litter by the side of the highway. Not a bad Advent image for us to entertain today; we are all prisoners of our selves, to some degree, on the way to liberation. Why not clear a highway for our Liberator to hasten our freedom?
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