Advent | Comfort | Isaiah 40: 1-11 | Week 2

"Turn with me to Isaiah 40.  We're journeying with the prophet Isaiah as he points us to the coming Christ, in this Advent season.  We're using lectionary passages, passages the church universal has decided on, in a given year, to lead us to the birth of Christ.  This Sunday's passage is Isaiah 40:1-11.  

As I was reviewing it on the plane back this week, I had an experience come back to mind.  I was a backpacking guide throughout my college years.  One night we were in the wilderness outside of Crested Butte.  There were high schoolers packed in next to me in our fly.  There was a sound out in the field.  It was a sound that could only be described as heinous and death!  If you've been in the wilderness at all, you know you hear everything.  There's some things you don't want to hear and that was one of those things.  I was lying there, packed in like a sardine and I hear a mauling going on in the field near me.  I snuck deeper in my sleeping bag, trying to give the aura of confidence to the high schoolers who were with me.  As I slid my feet down to the bottom of my bag, I encountered a little plastic bag that I had slid in there, and it had beef jerky in it.  I'm like, "I'm about to be the beef jerky!"  I said to everyone in my tent, "Hey, guys, good news-bad news.  Good news is you're going to get a snack.  Bad news is you might be a snack if you don't eat it quickly.  Hurry!"  I gave out the beef jerky because I did not want to get mauled by whatever I heard earlier.  

Wilderness can be a scary place, can't it?  If you spend much time out there, you know that you're at the mercy of the weather, you're at the mercy of the wild, you're at the mercy of the animals, and that can be a nerve-wracking place.  The Israelites knew a little about wilderness themselves.  They knew about the wilderness of being slaves in Egypt.  They did that wilderness for 400 years.  After they got out of that wilderness, they crossed through the Red Sea and wandered around in the wilderness for another 40 years.  It was during that season of wandering that the Israelites were solidified as a nation.  It was in that wilderness wandering that they grew to trust God, they grew to know God, and they were given the commands of God, solidifying them as a people and a nation....."