Preparartion #adventbookclub
Isaiah 40:1-11 (CEV)
Encourage God’s People
40 Our God has said:
“Encourage my people!
Give them comfort.
2 Speak kindly to Jerusalem
and announce:
Your slavery is past;
your punishment is over.
I, the Lord, made you pay
double for your sins.”
- By ESO/G. Hüdepohl (www.atacamaphoto.com) (http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1336a/) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
3 Someone is shouting:
“Clear a path in the desert!
Make a straight road
for the Lord our God.
4 Fill in the valleys;
flatten every hill
and mountain.
Level the rough
and rugged ground.
5 Then the glory of the Lord
will appear for all to see.
The Lord has promised this!”
6 Someone told me to shout,
and I asked,
“What should I shout?”
We humans are merely grass,
and we last no longer
than wild flowers.
7 At the Lord’s command,
flowers and grass disappear,
and so do we.
8 Flowers and grass fade away,
but what our God has said
will never change.
Your God Is Here!
9 There is good news
for the city of Zion.
Shout it as loud as you can
from the highest mountain.
Don’t be afraid to shout
to the towns of Judah,
“Your God is here!”
10 Look! The powerful Lord God
is coming
to rule
with his mighty arm.
He brings with him
what he has taken in war,
and he rewards his people.
11 The Lord cares for his nation,
just as shepherds care
for their flocks.
He carries the lambs
in his arms,
while gently leading
the mother sheep.
So we journey through Advent, to prepare ourselves – and to prepare the way for God to come. To come into our hearts and lives and into the world.
Making straight the crooked roads, making even the bumpy paths, bringing the Good News – God is here.
Come Lord, Let it be so
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