Monday, December 5, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
There is a highway
The desert and the parched land will exult; the high desert will rejoice and bloom with abundant flowers, rejoice with joyful song.
Big weekend for our family. Marc is back to work at Bunny’s after three months recovering from an accident and awful hamstring tears. He is healthier than ever and very happy. And they love him being there.
They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the hands of the feeble, make firm the knees that are weak, say to those whose hearts are frightened, “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God!”
Aki’s parents have made the move to Austin and arrived yesterday evening. They will be settling in, still working on Zoom, letting their grandkids jump all over them. It is a long way from Buffalo, where six feet of snow fell two weeks ago, to the high-dry-seventy degrees-in-December desert of Austin and the Hill Country.
Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water. And a highway will be there, the holy way. No one unclean may pass over it, nor fools go astray.
And with the help of two small boys, those same jumping-all-over-grandkids Miles and Jasper, our apartment is decorated for Christmas. Margaret made fabulous chili and we put together a smart Sunday lunch among all those decorations and Mom’s twenty-year old living room Christmas tree, which was never taken down until this November. We’re all glad it can have a new life in Austin. While we ate panettone and fruit for dessert, we pretended to be a pre-school library class, and I read Margaret Wise Brown’s book, Christmas in the Barn to everyone.
No lion will be there, nor beast of prey go up to be met upon it. It is for those with a journey to make, and on it the redeemed will walk.
As I write it’s getting dark, the traffic is quieting and the moon is waxing toward full, deep in the dark cloudy sky. Andi and Aki are going to the Alamo Theater for dinner and to watch for the umpteenth time the quote-a-long version of Elf. We’re taking Miles and Jasper to a goodbye party for our friend Sandy, who is leaving Austin and Grace Covenant Church after twenty-five years, to return to her home town of Great Bend, Kansas. There will be hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream, and candy canes.
Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy. They will meet with joy and gladness, their sorrow and mourning will flee. Our God will come to save us! And we will hear what the Lord proclaims.
I feel/hear/see/taste/smell great healing in the winds of our big weekend. Like many, our family works long hours and days and weeks with little fanfare, and then sometimes God’s powerful life, which always pulses beneath the surface, comes up in rivers and highways and waterfalls of splendor. It’s in times like this that the instant immediate presence of Jesus and his low whispers of creativity sound in my ear.
If there is a paralytic in the house, let him be let down through the roof for the touch of Jesus the Healer.
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “What are you thinking in your hearts? Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Rise and walk?’ But that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins …” and he said to the one who was paralyzed, “I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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