Point in the right DIRECTION

On the 2nd Sunday of Advent we heard that we are to make straight the ways of Lord, so on and so forth, a familiar Advent message from the Gospel of Luke:


“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Lk. 3:4b-6)

Now while at first, you may, like myself, have the song Prepare Ye from the musical Godspell running through your head. Ok, so seriously now, the descriptive and metaphorical language of paths, mountains, valleys, hills, and the like are meant to draw us to a self examination of our own ways.

For how often is it that we tend to forsake the age old principle of the shortest distance from point A to point B is a straight line and make long and tangled roads in our lives? How often are we all too comfortable with letting good ol' "time"* solve our problems and allowing things to become drawn out and twisted as opposed to marching directly straight down the road to forgiveness and mercy?

The paths we are called to make straight and valleys we are called to fill are the ones in our own lives. The lack of love, charity, and so on, we are called to reconcile, make straight, and allow the grace of God to flow in us freely rather than with all the roadblocks can put up.

If we allow this grace to flow in us freely, we prepare the way of the Lord, and allow, through a renewal of our own discipleship, Christ to be born in us once again!!! Which reminds us that Christmas is not simply a celebration of what happened approximately 2,000 years ago, nor is it a celebration of anticipation of when Christ will come again, but it is also an ongoing event everyday. A process of letting Christ be born in us today and everyday by being vigilant towards our anxieties and drowsiness of heart and of making crooked ways straight is also what we rejoice in, and celebrate on December 25th.

Let us not over complicate things, make crooked ways, or devise ways to get from point A to point B that we hope or think are quicker!



*Like the saying, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," the same is true of time. Time doesn't solve problems, people with the help of God solve problems.