Here's a great vision. It's a poem of return and restoration and these words have lasted aeons. But how would we speak of Gods restoration today? What images would we use? Here the prophet takes what is dry and lifeless and doesn't just inject it with life but with celebration: it's not just a flower garden but the whole desert blooms; it's not just a path but a roadway.
The poetry is not about a journey home but a journey towards justice, towards peace, towards full lives. Advent calls us to believe. There's nothing about the season that is easy to hold on to and trust with your life, even if it is just a stable and sliding stars. Of course, that too is just metaphor that leads us towards the impossibility of what we live towards. It is as if Advent allows us the time and the reason to stick our faith onto the future and believe deserts will bloom and the hungry will be fed. It's a time for believing because there is nothing we talk about in the season that we would logically expect to happen. A time for beieving: might as well start the year as we mean to go on.
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