Imagine that you are a sixth century B.C. Jew in exile. You have never known anything but captivity. From childhood you have been told the Exodus stories, but all of your life your lot has been to wander in the wilderness. Suddenly, a voice is crying in that wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God! Could it be? Is that God coming to lead us home? To deliver us from this exile? God is saying, Comfort, comfort. Jerusalem’s warfare is ended, and her iniquity is pardoned. Salvation is at hand!

Luke remembers these words from Israel’s history to say that this scene is being re-enacted in a new desert. John the Baptizer has become the voice crying in the wilderness. And Yahweh is coming to lead His people still to an even more glorious redemption. He has come, in the flesh, to make the rough places plain.

The history is still being told, for it is to the wilderness of our hearts that Christ comes, and it is there that we must prepare for His coming. He has come to level the mountains of our pride, to fill up the valleys of our fear. He has come to smooth out the rough places of our waywardness, our lack of love, our hurtful words. He has come to make the crooked roads of our perverse ways straight. Comfort, comfort, O people! See the salvation of God! Prepare His way and rejoice in your deliverance.