December 4th, 2005
Smoothing Rough Roads

We take modern transportation for granted. It’s easy to get into a car or on a bus or into a taxi or on a train or plane and go from one place to another. Not so in the time of the bible. I journey from Judea to Jerusalem wasn’t just measured in flat miles, but the journey was as much about climbing mountains and going down into deep valleys and climbing up again into the hills. The journey wasn’t quick or easy.
Therefore when we hear that Isaiah hopes for a day when “Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low”, he’s expressing the difficulty people faced in traveling. I suspect Isaiah would be very happy with today’s transportation system.

Yet on a spiritual level, there are deep valleys and foreboding mountains that don’t have solutions as easy as the Long Island Railroad or Southwest Airlines. There are angers that won’t go away; disappointments in relationships that don’t seem to heal; physical and emotional and mental illnesses that take their toll; breaking marriages, demanding parents, ungrateful children, thankless bosses or co-workers, bizarre neighbors, poverty, racism, injustice, lack of respect for life, cruelty, war, terrorism, -- and the dumb little things that upset us like Christmas lights that won’t all light up.

These “mountains and valleys” of life can keep us from traveling to the place God wants us to be. We finish each day exhausted and start each day with almost the same exhaustion. There is so much to do to prepare for Christmas that we run out of energy to prepare the way of the Lord.

This is why we need Advent and Isaiah -- we need to stop and notice that in the midst of all that is depressing, we expect God to show up and fill in the valleys and lower the mountains. Sounds to good to be true? It’s not. Accept Jesus as the Lord of life; put our cares into his hands. Let go. Pray. Wait. Jesus is coming to you now.

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