Bulldozers and Earthmovers

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. A voice cries: “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. (Isaiah 40:1-4 ESV). Sitting in our apartment and looking across the street we see a great deal of construction being done. There are always bulldozers and earthmovers working literally moving mountains of dirt to make way for new houses and streets. It jogged my memory a bit, reminding me of our reading today. The Hebrew word translated “comfort” is nachaw. The Hebrew is much more detailed than our English translation. In addition to “comfort,” the Hebrew word carries with it a sense of being sorry, regretting, repenting, changing one’s mind, or turning in a different direction. Just like the land being built on across from us just isn’t quite right for the construction, something isn’t right within us. The loss, pain, sorrow, and regret of our lives will continue to trouble us until relief comes through change. The Bible calls such change “repentance.” It entails a change of heart, a change of mind, nothing short of a new life. We head in a different direction because we’ve become a different person or people. There is new life only after the old life is done away with, however bad or good it may have been. In Isaiah 40, the crying voice describes the building of this new life. The very landscape of our lives must change. For God’s gift of comfort to come, all the mountains and valleys that have provided us the life we accept as normal must be removed. Think dynamite and bulldozers. That’s what Jesus did in the cross. There is always something frightening about such a change. Mary and I have made a lot of moves in our lives. We have lived in different cities, states, and many homes. One of the wonderful things we learned years ago was to let our anchor down at whatever port we may find ourselves. That place became home. More and more I am finding in my life a sense of home being just out of reach, though clearly in sight. A lot of the dirt work has already been done. The land has been prepared for the construction, though it is not finished yet. You can anticipate the move in day; however, it will far exceed that anticipation. In the mean time, more construction must be done. There are still obstacles in the way for all of us. Each of us has our mountains to level and valleys to fill in. While we may anticipate, perhaps even fear the earthmovers and bulldozers, but in the end it’s more like being set free. When that happens, the wilderness voice cries, “Comfort, comfort my people!” Let’s move a little dirt!