“It is for those with a journey to make.”  Those words leapt out at me from the reading’s veritable garden of prose. Isaiah has a beautiful way of giving us God’s promises, painting a lovely picture – he turns the desert into flowers and song, certainly a bit of heaven for a people who have spent generations in the desert, wandering, yearning for the relief of God’s love. The coming of God will bring healing, strength, and abundant water for man and beast. A holy way, a highway will be there for those with a journey to make.

We all have a journey to make. Pondering my journey in life, I realize it has had many different paths, yet all of them have ultimately led me to God, each in its unique way. Even the detours have taught me the direction better taken. But then I acknowledge that even those wandering side trips have taught me perhaps more and better than if I had stayed on “the holy way.” As I grow older, I see God’s hand in all I have done or has been done to me, and in all these I see what they all were- streams bursting forth in the desert, burning sands turned to pools.

I believe the optimism of Isaiah’s prophecies is real, not whistling in the wind. For all the evil we see in the world today, I believe there is even more goodness and love, God here with us. “Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy…..sorrow and mourning will flee.”

“Behold, our Savior will come; you need no longer fear.”  Isaiah 35:4