Love With Skin on It: A Street Psalms Advent Devotionalنموونە

In the second week of Advent, we hear afresh the words of the prophets John the Baptist and Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Matt. 3:3). According to this vision, “every valley will be filled and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough ways made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:5). The imagery of ancient road building through inhospitable wilderness terrain evokes scenes of great movements of earth and stone. The roads were subject to natural forces, but were sustained over time by human toil and attention.

Such preparation requires upheaval. The prophets recognize the massive upheaval that God’s Word induces and calls forth from humanity. It is not always obvious in the moment, but when viewed from the long arc of history, we see God’s Word at work in the world doing “abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:21). And this is happening now!

The process by which all this is accomplished is easily missed because the massive transformations that are happening in our midst are being accomplished in the most understated and counterintuitive way. Transformation is achieved not through might but through weakness. The power of a vulnerable life is its openness to the inevitable risks that life carries. To walk in this kind of vulnerability requires a primal trust that even John the Baptist found difficult to accept (Luke 7:20-23). New life is sowed in vulnerability, brought forth in vulnerability, and sustained in vulnerability. This is our power against which nothing can stand. 

Unfortunately, the modern religious experience tends to mirror the journey of the ego. It starts big and ends small. The Gospel journey is the inverse of the ego journey. It starts small and ends big (Matt. 13:31-33). The Gospel waxes as our egos wane, so that at the end of our lives, we are free to bear witness to the massive upheaval of God’s transforming love in ways we thought impossible at the beginning. What was sowed in vulnerability is harvested in the power of the Gospel itself—the power that is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). This is the way of the Lord.