Preparing the Way

The invitation to prayer during the season of Advent in Teach Us to Pray is this sentence from Isaiah 40:3: In the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord.

We’ve been saying that sentence before all of our meals these last weeks. I’ll admit that sometimes I raise my voice a bit to begin it, hoping to quiet some of the clamor around the table, maybe even to cut off a few arguments and redirect things.

I came across this poem by Joseph G. Donders in the resource Imaging the Word last week that has had me thinking a lot about the first part of that invitation: in the wilderness.

In the Wilderness

John came out of the desert

to preach in the wilderness.

…

 

The wilderness

he preached in

was his own country.

A wilderness

not coming

from the hands of God,

but from a jungle

caused by innumerable

human decisions

that were

      wrong,

      shortsighted,

      and selfish.

Decisions

that had created havoc

in the lives

of the many.

      It was in that

      jungle

      John preached

      and baptized.

As long

as we think

about John

like that

-preaching

in his own country

two thousand years ago-

his preaching

remains distant

and very far

away.

Let us try

to get that wilderness

and also John’s word

nearer home,

so that it can cut us

to the bone.

 

Let us speak

about the wilderness

in which we live.

And let us think

not only of sin

but of the world

we are accustomed to.

…

 

It is in that forest,

in that jungle

that the word of God

sounds

through John,

saying that once

justice and integrity

are victorious,

the whole of humankind

will be saved,

that Jesus, the savior,

is going to bring

a total difference.

But indicating also

where we come in and

what we should do:

      straightening the paths

      we are walking now,

      preparing a way for the Lord,

      filling the valleys and potholes,

leveling the mountains and

      obstacles in us

and in the lives we live....

 

The poem got me thinking about how we live in the wilderness, and how it is in the wilderness of our daily lives that we are called to prepare the way of the Lord.

 

And then I saw this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in an article on The Twelve: “It is impossible to state too clearly that only the coming of the Lord himself can make ready the way for his coming.... The end of all preparation of the way of Christ must lie precisely in perceiving that we ourselves can never prepare the way.”

 

I hear in this a reminder that it is in the wilderness of our daily lives that Christ comes to us. He meets us where we are and when we receive him, when we say yes to his work in us, it is he who fills the valleys and potholes and levels the obstacles, restoring us, preparing us to be who we were created to be. In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.