Comfort, Comfort My People

After a long silence, after years of hurting, someone speaks. Not shouting. Not scolding. Softly, the way you might speak to a crying child. Comfort. Comfort, my people.

The book of Isaiah has a turning point at chapter forty. The chapters before it warned again and again that Jerusalem would be judged for turning away from God. And in the end, that happened. In the year five hundred and eighty-six before Christ, the Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. Many of the people were taken far away to Babylon, hundreds of miles to the east, beside its great rivers. They sat there and wept, one psalm says, when they remembered Zion. They wondered if God had finished with them forever. Isaiah forty speaks straight into that grief. It is God's message for his people in exile.

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak comfortably to Jerusalem. Call out to her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.” Speak comfortably. In Hebrew it means speak to her heart. Her hard time is over. Her sin is forgiven. She has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. It is as if God is saying, enough. That's enough sorrow now. I am not finished with you. I am coming to bring you home.

Then another voice rings out. “The voice of one who calls out, Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness! Make a level highway in the desert for our God.” When a great king travelled in the ancient world, workers went ahead of him to smooth the road. Fill in the potholes. Flatten the bumps. Clear away the rocks. And Isaiah imagines that happening on a giant scale. “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain. The Lord's glory shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” God is coming, and the whole world will see. Then a voice says: cry out. What shall I cry? All people are like grass. Grass withers, flowers fade. But the word of our God stands forever.

Then Jerusalem herself is told to climb a high mountain and shout the good news to the towns of Judah. “Behold, your God!” Look, here he is. And what is he like? First, strong. “The Lord God will come as a mighty one, and his arm will rule for him.” But then, in the very next breath, gentle. “He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead those who have their young.” A mighty King with a strong arm, and that same arm scooping up tired little lambs and holding them close. Hundreds of years later, a man named John appeared in the wilderness by the Jordan River, calling people to get ready. All four Gospels say: this is the one Isaiah spoke of, the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. And the one he prepared the way for called himself the good shepherd.

One group of Jewish people took this verse so seriously that they moved to the desert. The community that kept the Dead Sea Scrolls lived at Qumran, beside the Dead Sea. Their rule book, called the Community Rule, quotes Isaiah forty, verse three, and explains that they had gone into the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord there, by studying God's law. They were living there in the years before John the Baptist began to preach, not far away.

Comfort, comfort my people. You'll find it in Isaiah chapter forty, verses one to eleven. A mighty God who comes to his hurting people, and carries the lambs close to his heart. So here is a question to carry with you. When you feel tired or sad, can you picture yourself as a lamb that God is carrying?