^{Sorry…for those that “follow”, last night’s posted before I was ready…you didn’t get the song!   I’ll try this again.  Hope it works!}

³A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. ⁴Every 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. ⁵Then 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: 3-5)

Oh, good grief…here we are in the wilderness yet again!  The GPS has no service, the food has run out, and our water has begun to mean more to us than our fully-updated and completely charged iPhone.  As we wander through the wilderness of our lives, we are unsure where our next step should be planted.  The pathway ahead is murky at best.  Our backpack which is usually packed with the supplies for our journey is empty.  So, without the resources to which we are accustomed, how do we prepare?  How do we traverse this desert highway when we can’t see the road ahead, when we sometimes can’t feel the road beneath our feet?  What do we do when we are out here, exposed, without our comforts and our backups and those things to which we are accustomed?  How do we prepare the way of the Lord when we don’t know what to do, when we don’t even know who we are?

This season talks over and over about preparations?  So for what are you preparing?  For what are you spending these remaining 18 days doing?  (18 DAYS…ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?)  Here’s a thought:  what if you put down all those carefully-constructed lists?  What if you didn’t have to get everything done that you had planned?  What if gifts were not productions but just happened in the dusk of the coming Light?  What if the light was still only a dim line of illumination?  What if you turned off the news channel and ignored reports of fake news stories and fake intelligence and temporary breaking news and turned to the realness of your heart and soul?  What if, just for a moment, the disunity of our world did not affect your soul–just for a moment?  What if your preparations for the season had nothing to do with shopping or decorating or baking or worrying?  What if your only thing to do this season was to learn to abide and to travel through that mysterious wilderness to a place you did not know you could be?

Abide…just be…listen…watch…breathe in the emptiness of the wilderness and let it empty you.  Prepare the way of the Lord by emptying what you have collected for the sacred season.  Clear your thoughts of what you expect yourself to do and clear your days of who you expect yourself to be.  Let the wilderness wash over you and become something you did not know you could be.  Clear your mind of what you thought it was and empty your heart of what you thought you needed.  And, there, there in the wilderness that you did not expect, wait…and abide in what you find.  And prepare yourself to come and see this thing that has happened—over and over again.  And there, there we will find evidence of light…

The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. (Nancy Wynne Newhall)

“Abide” (Carrie Newcomer)

FOR TODAY:  What newness do you find in the wilderness?  For what are you preparing?

Advent Peace,

Shelli