Stop and read the Isaiah lesson (35:1-10). Pause, and take a deep breath, maybe two. Then read it again. Let the prophet’s wonderful metaphors of the Day of the Lord roll over you. Close your eyes. Picture the situations that Isaiah describes.

Have you ever seen a desert in bloom? For most of us here on the Gulf Coast, surrounded by lush growth throughout the year, the astonishing appearance of a riot of brilliant blossoms popping up in a heretofore bleak and barren landscape is beyond our ken. We can only try to imagine what magnificent delight would come to desert dwellers on such a day.

And for those of us who, despite our every-day aches and pains, are relatively whole physically, we know intellectually it would be wonderful for the blind, the deaf, the lame, the mute to be freed from their physical limitations. But can we ever begin to feel the joy of such profound relief, of such perfect freedom? According to Isaiah, that ecstatic joy is what it will be like when God comes to save us from our fear and weakness.

We churchgoers think we know what it is to walk in the way of the Lord, but even so, we know just how often we try short cuts or wander off into dead ends. But on that day, Isaiah tells us, God’s Holy Way will, at last, be clearly laid out before us, and finally it will be impossible for us to go astray. There will be no danger or temptation. Can you imagine? Then we can join the redeemed singing and praising God in all the majesty and glory of that Holy Presence. The joy of the Lord will have defeated all our misery—we will have no room for sorrow or sighing.

Christ will come again; you can count on it. As the prophet and the old gospel hymn procalim, “What a day of rejoicing that will be!”