Clearing The Ground

Clear a way for the Eternal through the waste … every valley must be filled up, every mountain and hill lowered, rough places smoothed. Isaiah 40:3,4

We can prepare the way for Christ by drawing up a list of things we would need to clear up if Christ was to make a personal royal visit to our area. I recall a local person saying, as a team of people cut the hedges and grass verges the day before a royal visit: ‘A royal visit is the the only way we’d have got some of these things done. Without it we would have waited for ever’. Once you have made such a list, why not pick out one or two things that you can begin to do something about now?

Three most basic ways we can clear the way is by honesty, reconciliation, and preparing for our own death. Honesty: – so many shop-lifters deceive themselves that they are not thieves that stores have to put up signs saying ‘Shop Lifting is Theft.’ Do we deceive ourselves that tax evasion, or withholding rightful information from another person is not theft?

Reconciliation:- is there someone who is upset with us to whom we can give the gift of love this season?

Preparing our own death:- am I ready to be ‘called home’ today? Are my affairs in order? Have I done those things that I ought to have done? Can I get rid of clutter that prevents me fulfilling the heart’s desires God has put within me?

Christ, Light of the world
meet us in our place of darkness,
journey with us
and bring us to your new dawning.
RJS

Heaven, shed your dew
Clouds, rain down salvation
Earth bring forth the Saviour
Praise in all our days Common Prayer at Taize