Today’s Advent Reflection is from Carolyn Wort, Reader at St Mary's Whitewell.
Seen as Whole.
Isaiah 40:1-5
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Reflection
What is your go to comfort food? When the going gets tough do you turn to chocolate, cake, a bowl of soup or does hot chocolate do it for you? For me it’s all of the above plus I could add a few more!! At times like this, in the midst of the pandemic, we are all feeling in need of comfort and I guess a lot of us are turning to baking and eating!
Comfort is a hot bowl of a bowl of soup or a cup of tea when I have been working outside in the freezing cold all day. Comfort is something we hopefully receive from others when we are having a really bad time in our lives, maybe after losing a loved one. Comfort for the Disciples was hearing Jesus rebuke the storm. When they woke him from sleep, He rebuked the wind and told the disciples to be of good cheer. They took comfort in his words.
There are many situations that we find ourselves that involve fear and discomfort. The world is in great dread right now from the Coronavirus Pandemic. The fear is palatable for many and we can see it in people’s faces. Combined with this there is political and economic upheaval worldwide. We might add as Christians that Jesus told us that in the end times there would be pestilences, wars and rumours of war, earthquakes and other natural disasters as well as the return of Jesus as judge. There are so many things beyond our personal power to stop, and there are things which nobody at all seems able to stop. Even the vaccine that we praise God for won’t let us return completely to our old ways of being for a long time, it is always hard to live when things are so out of our control. We need to be comforted. Paul tells us in Romans 15:4 that Scripture was given to instruct us “that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”
So how does God bring comfort to us?
In our passage he sent a herald in John the Baptist and he tells us that a way has been prepared in the wilderness. All the obstacles such as hills and valleys are to be made level. The crooked road must be straightened and the potholes in the road filled. John the Baptist preached repentance to Israel. All of us as Christians are called to be like John the Baptist.
Our role as Disciples is to bring people to the better way of life, the road that God has chosen for all of us. God has chosen us, flawed as we are, to help people find that way of comfort and peace that we are all desperate for. Our God can provide everything we need to get through these times if we will let him. We don’t need our comfort food, our retail therapy, if we can afford it, we don’t need to do anything other than trust and obey him. This is the way John the Baptist tells us about while he preached repentance to Israel in the wilderness. We realize that Isaiah was talking about a different road to the one often travelled.
John was to introduce the one God had chosen to redeem us, Jesus Christ. Jesus calls himself “the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6) He is the way to a better Jerusalem where the Father is. This is indeed good tidings to Zion and also to us. It shines the light of hope on us too.
So how do we smooth out the way for ourselves and others this Advent time? How do we prepare our hearts for the Christ child?
Although it is dark outside these mornings, can you make space for the Christ child by starting the day a little earlier, maybe you do already? You could use that time to just to just sit and be still and let God be your comfort or listen to the words of our reading sung in this recording of the Messiah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCjAi1hod0E
However you choose to spend your time preparing the way, I pray that each one of us will be comforted by the Lord this Advent time.