Today’s Advent Reflection is from Mark Hackney
The Road we Tread.
Isaiah 35:1-10
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.
4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.’
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;
7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people;
no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.
9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.
10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Reflection
Chapter 35 of Isaiah is a wonderful poem on God’s final salvation with his people. Note how much movement there is. A lot of walking!
The desert, blossoming, (1) takes us back to Israel’s first freedom march through a desert (Exodus – Numbers) and suggests a restoration of all creation. The healing of blind, deaf and lame symbolizes salvation on a grand scale – beyond mere restoration to the land of Israel (5-6). The ‘highway’ (8) recalls the way from Assyria to Egypt, where those people would worship God, but by verse 9 we seem to be in paradise. In verse 10, the return to Jerusalem, after Babylonian captivity, drifts over into a greater salvation.
It is so reassuring, comforting, to be reminded of the supreme protection that our loving God offers to us as we ‘march’ on our Christian ‘highway’: ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God ... He will come and save you.’ We can know that ‘the majesty of our God’ embraces, surrounds us, and that He knows what lies behind and beyond us as we travel on life’s road. And I take great personal reassurance from the promise: ‘not even fools, shall go astray.’ I have sometimes tested my God on this! Yet, always he has come and saved me, kept me on the true path.
We are all travellers, foolish or not, as we try to keep to the right road, the straight path, yet, as we know all too well, there will be obstacles on this straight path, difficulties on the road.
Have you read the book or seen the film: ‘The Lord of the Rings’? The hobbit Frodo decries the fact that he is tasked with the responsibility of taking the one ring to Mount Doom to be destroyed. His road ahead to the dark land of Mordor feels too much for him to bear. Frodo says, ‘I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.' The wise wizard Gandalf, given these words by the Catholic author JRR Tolkien, replies to Frodo: 'So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’
Wise words indeed: we may feel at times that the road we are on is uncertain, troublesome, even frightening. But we do not walk alone. God is watching us, seeing how we decide what to do ‘with the time that is given to us.’ He is our compass on the road. Our God walks beside us. This is our great comfort.
Peter reminds us of our obligation that Jesus left us a specific path to follow: ‘For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them. (2 Pet. 2:21). We reflect on the road we tread on our Christian journey through life. We want to take care of the footprints we leave, let them be signs to others that the Lord is the one true way: ‘whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked. (1John 2.6).
Our Lord is our trailblazer. We have someone who has travelled the path before us so we can follow … and succeed. We will reach our heavenly destination; the route God has mapped out for us. Our passage from Isaiah reminds us that ‘the redeemed shall walk there’.
Though it has its challenges, because of He who is beside us, it is above all a comforting road we walk.