A Devotion for Preparing the Way

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

-Isaiah 40: 1-5

It is often said that Advent is the season of preparation.

We hear sermons about preparing our hearts and minds with spiritual practices like prayer and Scripture reading.

We prepare our homes with festive décor, stringing up lights and holly. We wrap presents and stuff envelopes with glossy cards, tying a shiny bow on anything that we possibly can.

We work so hard to prepare the spaces around us, setting the scene and making room for the coming Christ child.

But what does it mean to prepare the world for Emmanuel?

How can we possibly prepare for the interruption that is the Incarnation?

What does it mean to smooth out the road ahead of God in places that are marked by pain, by disaster, by homelessness and war?

How do we make room for God in places that seem to be filled with heartbreak, corruption, poverty, and hopelessness?

If we were to listen to the prophets in the Old Testament, we are reminded that preparing the way of the Lord sometimes means a tearing down before a building up. As Rachel Held Evans puts it, the cries of prophets like Isaiah remind us that the business of preparing for God “sometimes…means getting in the demolition business.”

Making room for God sometimes means tearing down the old way of doing things so that new life may grow.
For those who work and volunteer in disaster recovery ministry, this is not such a new concept. Many times, the only way a family can recover is by completely starting over, by razing to the ground an existing structure so that a new, more sturdy and safe structure may be built in its place.

Unstable, damaged beyond repair, filled with rot and decay – these are no place for new things to be born.

Doing the work of disaster recovery is all about making room for new life to bloom. It is about preparing the way, going before and making space, clearing the path for recovery and hope to break through.

Being in the business of demolition with God doesn’t mean creating destruction for destruction’s sake; rather, it’s a putting away of the old ways of doing things, the ways that don’t bring life. It’s a leveling of the ground so that mountains of fear, and anger, and darkness and brokenness may fall away.

It’s lifting up of the valleys of despair so that all may see the Christ child that comes on the horizon.

A favorite translation of John 1:14 comes from the Message translation.

It reads:

The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.

We are preparing for the Word made flesh, God-with-us, to move into the neighborhood. What might we need to do away with so that there is room for the fullness of his presence?

What ground will you level, building will you raze, or path will you clear to welcome the Messiah?

In Advent hope,

Chaplain Amy

Prepare
A Blessing for Advent 

Strange how one word
will so hollow you out.
But this word
has been in the wilderness
for months.
Years.

This word is what remained
after everything else
was worn away
by sand and stone.
It is what withstood
the glaring of sun by day,
the weeping loneliness of
the moon at night.

Now it comes to you
racing out of the wild,
eyes blazing
and waving its arms,
its voice ragged with desert
but piercing and loud
as it speaks itself
again and again:

Prepare, prepare.

It may feel like
the word is leveling you,
emptying you
as it asks you
to give up
what you have known.

It is impolite
and hardly tame,
but when it falls
upon your lips
you will wonder
at the sweetness,

like honey
that finds its way
into the hunger
you had not known
was there.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace