Read: Isaiah 35:1-10
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. (v. 10)
You are reading these words about halfway through Advent. If like me, you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then your Advent falls in the dead of winter. But as I read today’s passage, I’m picturing spring: trees budding, flowers blooming, birds busying themselves building nests. The world rejoices as it emerges from a long, hard winter.
That’s the feeling of Isaiah 35. This passage evokes the bloom of spring as a long dormant creation awakens. But Isaiah’s vision quickly shifts from the natural world to something supernatural: “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (vv. 5-6). In Isaiah’s vision, creation is not shaking off winter. It’s breaking free from the powers of sin and death and hell. At the center of the restored creation is a redeemed human race.
Through the heart of this vision runs a highway called “the Way of Holiness” (v. 8). It’s the way God made for his people to return from exile. It’s the way the Son of God walked on his long journey to the cross. It’s the way available to anyone who wants to pass from death into life. It’s a way marked with joy: the joy of those who once were lost but now are found, who were once dead but are now alive. There’s no greater joy than the joy of the redeemed.
As you pray, thank God for always making a way.
Ben Van Arragon is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. After twenty years of congregational ministry, he now serves his denomination as a pastor wellbeing consultant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
