In Handel’s Messiah, the tenor soloist sings,
The voice of Him
That crieth in the wilderness:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill be made low,
The crooked straight,
And the rough places plain.
These words are originally attributed to the prophet Isaiah, and are also spoken in the gospels by John the Baptist. This year, while singing in the chorus of Messiah, this text really grabbed me.
There are a variety of landscapes in our minds and hearts, carried both by us and by our world, where we long for the emergence of fairness, justice, and peace. Most often, we attribute the rapid changes of mountains, valleys, and roads to cataclysmic forms of destruction. It’s interesting to imagine these changes as forms of… cataclysmic rightness. All things suddenly shifting toward the ways they ought to be… the ways we long for them to be.
We carry landscapes of pain, loss, war, violence, and interpersonal conflicts. Are these ever made right…? It’s so easy to fold, or wilt, or stay cynical. So often, whether close to our own relationships, or on the world stage, we see forms of harm persist.
But then I also think of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
But then I also think of the falling of the Berlin Wall.
But then I also think the 504 Sit-in of 1977 and the opportunities it opened.
But then I also think the Civil Rights Movement and the changes it initiated.
And I also think of…
a number of interpersonal reconciliations in my own life that are straight up miraculous and precious to me.
Maybe you have some too.
Wherever you are, and however you feel, I’m sure you long for cataclysmic rightness. I do too. An upturning toward what should be. Fairness, Justice, Peace. Purpose. Meaning. When we see it, we ought to shout it from the rooftops. When we can participate in making it so, we ought to lean our lives into it.
Smuggling Grace 