Season of Advent

This Advent season is different. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not in the United States. Maybe it’s the 85-degree weather we have been experiencing. However, this year I feel a strange attachment to the words of Isaiah.  What draws me into Isaiah 40 is the hope. Living in the West Bank forces me to see many of the injustices the Palestinian people live with each day. I go through the checkpoints, listen to the people speak about the homes they were forced to leave, been inside the refugee camps, and witnessed the indignity caused by the occupation. Sometimes, hope can be hard to find.

But hope is still there. I feel it in the dark of the night or in the way Palestinians refuse to give in to their oppressors. They exist for the day when they are free. The beginning of chapter 40 contains that same hope. I see people who have been oppressed and forced from their homes cling to hope. They hold to the promised light of the coming day; should that day come tomorrow or in the distant future. I feel a longing for justice and a day of peace; a day when God, who is here amongst the hurt, will be glorified in one voice.

The prophet Isaiah calls for us to “prepare the way of the LORD.” Let us prepare it together through prayer, love, and hope for the Kingdom of God. A day when Palestine and the world are free.

 

-Kevin