“Go on up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
‘Behold your God!’
Behold, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.”
Isaiah 40:9-11
Every year I promise myself it won’t happen. I preplan, I guard myself, I pray. But it still happens. I get upset with myself, my family, and the tree lights when they will not do what I want them to do. I get so obsessed with making the tree lights something magical, that I get frustrated every year. Either they are tangled, or a strand won’t work, or my father-in-law thinks it’s funny to include one strand of colored lights when I prefer all white. I get frustrated when my family won’t place them to my exact ideal. I cannot stop until they are correctly placed and giving off the proper amount of light in the seasonal darkness.
During this Advent season, we’ll forget to rest. We will get caught up in something—the children’s choir full of “heavenly angels,” finding the perfect tree in the sea of firs at the tree farm all in the name of creating the perfect Christmas memory, or some other sort of holiday hustle and bustle. Likely this will happen more than once over the season.
We need to remember that God is there. He’s with us in the middle of the woods looking for that tree, in the middle of the hustle and bustle. He was there in Israel tending His flock all those years ago, when they were waiting so long for the coming Messiah. He’s there with us in the middle of wherever we are. He will gently shepherd us when we lose our way or ignore the path we are supposed to be on. He will gather us like the foolish lambs that we are. He will forgive me when I inevitably get caught up in what I think is important about the Christmas season. These verses remind us that the Messiah is coming. He’s coming to take care of us. Our job is to sing it from the mountain tops. We are to proclaim that Good News even when it feels like it is going to take forever. It certainly felt that way to the Israelites. They didn’t know when the Messiah would come to reign on earth. We know that He has come, lived, and died. All for us. We can share His Good News with the confidence that He will come again. And what better time to do this than the Christmas season?
This year I’m trying something new—I am scheduling in some pausing points to reset myself away from the busy-ness of December. Just as the verse says, He will “gently lead” and I’ll be trying to regain my perspective and let the Lord guide my time with Him. During this season, when our focus should be on Jesus coming to earth to save the world from their sins, let us remember that the Lord is there to tend to us in our shortcomings, He will gather us in His arms when we fail, carry us through the busy-ness we can’t seem to avoid, and gently lead us into the peace of the season.
