There’s a lot of bone-cold weariness circling round all sorts of people—poor people, rich people, old people, young people. I’ve talked to people from as different walks of life and as different political opinions as you can imagine, yet perhaps without realizing it, they – we – all need the very same thing—HOPE.
I find people throwing hope around like a wish on a penny thrown into a well, but hope in all our human-sort-of things will just leave us longing.
It was to a weary people headed for exile, a people who had all but lost their hope as they stood amidst the crumbling of everything in which they found security that the prophet Isaiah cried out:
“Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:1-5 NIV, emphasis mine).
“Comfort, comfort,” we Americans know a thing or two about comfort; like a breakable ornament in bubble-wrap, we wrap ourselves in comfort hoping to be insulated from pain and difficulty. But God isn’t talking about our version of comfort; this Hebrew word comfort is “More like 1611 King James English ‘com-fort’: to strengthen, to encourage, and so God is saying ‘Encourage my people; in the middle of their discouragement, give them courage . . . .’”[i]
Here God is reaching out to His people telling them to be encouraged—full of courage—because He will bring forgiveness! He will bring justice – the valleys shall be raised up and the mountains made low! He will bring hope! He will bring Himself! Immanuel – God with us. Our hope is not flimsy or fleeting; our Hope is a Person – God come down.
I want to be comfortable; I want my kids to be comfortable (sort of – ha, ha). I want my country, my community, my family and friends, my stomach, my peace of mind, my bank account all to be comfortable – especially at Christmas. I want a cozy, twinkle-light, merry Christmas – one with a blanket of snow (which we rarely get here in Mississippi).
But when I pause long enough during this Advent, this season of waiting, I hear God whisper into my thoughts, “That’s too small. That comfort won’t last. Loosen the grip on that and receive my real com-fort—strength and courage for the present and hope that I am coming again!” On this side of the Nativity, Christmas is also a reminder that Christ will come again. Do we believe Him, or have we given up and settled in like many of the exiles with the Babylonians, trying to numb hopelessness with trinkets of earthly comfort?
If I believe that our Savior has come in Bethlehem, is come (still today through the Holy Spirit), and will come again, then how might I filter all my life through those lenses? That question leaves me lingering over Isaiah 40, waiting in prayer.
As I’m reading Isaiah 40 again, my children are piled on the couch on a dreary afternoon watching Matilda {again} 😊. If you’ve read (or seen) Matilda by Roald Dahl, you know the desire to yell at Matilda’s stupid, ridiculous parents, the Wormwoods; they have this beautiful gift of a child whom they completely reject. From start to finish of the book, they never realize whom they’ve been given. The reader is left wanting to shake them and wake them from their utter absurdity.
In this Advent, my prayer has been, “Lord, where am I thinking and acting like the Wormwoods? Where am I blind to your ways? Where am I squandering time or resources or RELATIONSHIPS? With your help, where can I line up my believing with my living?”
Do my thoughts and actions reveal a grateful soul whose hope is fixed on the only Hope of the whole wide world? Do I prepare the way for the Lord within my own heart? Do I expect Him to come? Does my Hope in Jesus flow out of me with a peace and joy that can ‘laugh at the days to come’ (Prov 31:25) because I know the One who is coming again? Help me, Holy Spirit, to live a resounding YES to these questions.”
In the midst of our advent customs as well as my ordinary routines of dishes, school, laundry, read-alouds, I’m finding an inner rhythm of praying and listening and receiving His real comfort. His comfort feels different—strengthening, encouraging, peaceful, joyful, hopeFUL. His comfort beckons me to yoke myself to Jesus, the One whose yoke is easy and his burden light (Matt. 11:28-30), the One who is my strength, the One who knows what really matters, the One by whom all things hold together (see Col. 1:17).
So this advent my prayer for you and for me is Paul’s prayer for the Christians in Rome: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
“And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all people will see it together” (Is. 40:5). Come, Lord Jesus, Come!
Love,
Morgan
[i] John Oswalt, Ph.D., “Comfort, Comfort My People: The Meaning of Isaiah 40”; video for Zondervan, view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSRgaRo8CSc. (Dr. Oswalt was my professor of Old Testament at Wesley Biblical Seminary.)
