Comfort, Comfort — Make a Road in the Wilderness

(Isaiah 40:1-11)

Do you know what it is to be tired?
Sleepy-tired goes away with a good long nap.
This was a deeper kind.
Tired all the way down,
where even your bones feel heavy,
where you are too worn out to walk
and too sad to ask for help.

God's people were that tired.
They had been far from home a long, long time,
away in the land of Babylon.
They felt forgotten.
They felt small.

And into all that tiredness,
God spoke a word.
He said it soft.
He said it twice, the way you say a thing
when you really, truly mean it.

Comfort. Comfort my people.
Speak gently to them.
Tell them the long sadness is ending.
Tell them I am coming.

This was the same God who had promised a feast on his mountain,
where he would wipe every tear from every face.
He had not forgotten his tired people.
He was coming closer.

And out in the wilderness,
where the ground is rocky and dry,
where no one would think to look for good news,
a voice began to cry:

Make a road!
Make a road in the desert for our God!
Fill the low valleys up.
Bring the proud mountains down.
Make the rough places smooth and the crooked places straight,
because Someone is coming this way,
and every single person is going to see him.

Now the grass dries up.
The flowers fade.
Everything you can hold in your hand
grows old and blows away like dust.
Even the things you love the most
wear out in the end.

But the word of God stands.
It stands like a mountain no wind can move.
And his word was this: I am coming.

Go up on the mountain, the voice said.
Climb high.
Shout it so nobody misses it.
Do not be afraid.
Look, here is your God!

And he comes gently,
the way a shepherd comes to his sheep.

He looks over all his flock,
and he counts them,
and he will not lose even one.
He goes out after the wobbly ones,
the little ones who cannot keep up.

And the lamb that is too tired to walk,
the most worn-out lamb of all,
he bends down low for.
He gathers it up in his arms.
He holds it close against his chest,
right there where it can feel his heartbeat,
and he carries it.

The lamb does not have to find the way.
The lamb does not have to be strong.
The lamb just gets carried,
safe against the shepherd's heart.

That voice in the wilderness was waiting
for a man named John.
Long years later, John stood beside a river,
and pointed with his whole hand
at Someone walking near,
and said, Look. Look. There he is.

The Shepherd himself,
the one Isaiah ached for all those years,
come at last to gather the tired lambs
and carry them near his heart.

So if you are ever that deep-down kind of tired,
listen for a shepherd's voice
coming up the road God made.
And for the ones too worn out even to listen,
God had one more word,
waiting on the very next page.