Is 30:19-21, 23-26 Ps 147:1-2, 3-4, 5-6 Mt 9:35–10:1, 5a, 6-8

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer The Daily Reflections

If Heaven were to come to earth today, what do you hope that it would look like? What would you see, hear, smell, taste, feel? How would the world be transformed?

It seems only appropriate that the readings in this season of Advent follow the theme of hope and expectation. After how long in exile, how long wandering lost and afraid, Christ is coming to earth to be with us and save us from our desperation. What a beautiful moment to anticipate.

Today in Isaiah, Israel waits with great anxiety for the day when she will find herself in the favor of the Lord once more, the day when prosperity, tranquility, and rejoicing will return to a people long burdened by tribulation and, more than anything, separation from God.

Separation from God.

Any unrest, any suffering, any insecurity can be traced back to this separation, this distance from the love and care of the Lord. The Israelites found themselves in a world that did not know their God, that forced them to choose and compromise and rationalize, that pulled them away from God and caused such a chasm between them and their creator and sustainer. In today’s increasingly complicated and religiously indifferent age, we too find ourselves feeling the distance and separation from God, longing to be close, but torn by the circumstances of a fallen humanity. We are desperate for God, our hearts racing after the Spirit relentlessly, hitting worldly obstacle after worldly obstacle and unable to see the face of our maker clearly.

But in Isaiah, there is joy. There is hope. And so too, for us, in this time before Christ is born to us, we find such excitement in our anticipation. God is coming to earth. Isaiah speaks of seeing the Teacher face to face, with our own eyes, no longer from behind a veil -- and we know, as Isaiah prophesized, that this is the Christ, Jesus, our teacher, our redeemer, our hope, revealed for us to know forever. We believe that he has come, we believe that he will come again, but more than anything, we believe, as we prepare for this Christmas season, that he is here. No longer separated from us, no longer distanced from us, but truly present in our world and in our lives, so long as we always remember to allow him to shine there. We open our hearts so that he may have a tabernacle within us, and we carry him as a light to a world in darkness, knowing that only he can bring the peace and security and love that Isaiah promised for his people, for us.

The veil has been lifted. Christ has come. Heaven and earth have been joined once more. Let us prepare ourselves again to receive our Lord and the hope he brings into our hearts, so that the world that does not know him may come to proclaim his name as we do with the great hope and expectation that this season manifests in all of us.