Isaiah 35:1-10

When Isaiah penned his “Rivers In the Desert” poem, Judah was in a bad way—internally Judah was corrupt and externally it was under threat of foreign invasion. But the poet of audacious hope does not despair; instead he proclaims that God will come, and in that day it will be said, “Here is your God!” And what happens when God comes?

Isaiah first paints a picture of a dry and barren desert flourishing, then switches the image from the environment being healed to people being healed. On the day that God comes the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dumb will speak, and the lame will leap. At the end of the poem Isaiah employs a zoomorphic literary device and speaks of a highway that runs through the now flourishing desert where there will be no beastly tyrants to disturb the peace and safety of the righteous who are traveling to Zion singing their songs of salvation. The healing wrought by the arrival of God is so complete that even sorrow and sighing flee away. Someday it will be said, “Here is your God” and on that day all that is wrong will be set right. But for now, all we can do is wait.

And that’s what Advent is for—learning to wait for God. In our high-tech, high-speed, high-stress age, we’re not very good at waiting—it feels too much like doing nothing. But it’s not doing nothing. As we wait, we slowly become contemplative enough to discern what God is doing. Unless we intentionally cultivate some contemplative slowness in our soul, it doesn’t matter if God acts, because we will most likely miss it. When God entered history definitively in Christ, a lot of people who should have perceived it and rejoiced, missed what God was doing or even resisted it. Quiet contemplatives like Simeon and Anna perceived the arrival of God’s salvation because they had learned how to wait.

The deeper truth is that God is always acting, because God is always loving his creation. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always inviting us into their house of love. But when we are consumed by anger, harried by anxiety, and driven by impatience, we are blind and deaf to what God is actually doing in the present moment. God is always about to act in our life and in our world, but if we want to discern the actions of God we must learn to first wait in quiet contemplation. Advent is a season to keep watch and ponder the stars like the ancient magi, to keep vigil in the fields like the shepherds of Bethlehem. God is always about to act and God is always acting. The question is, can we perceive it? Another poem in Isaiah sums it up well:

Behold, I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth.
Do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
(Isaiah 43:19)