God's Advent Invitation
Throughout this Advent, I’ve been meditating on this verse, which is the opening invocation from my prayer book:
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Isaiah 40:3
We all know this verse from the ministry of John the Baptist in the Judean desert, but I don’t think it refers exclusively to him. It’s true about you and me too. As I’ve prayed with this verse, I’ve noticed an invitation to believe that God speaks to each of us when we are in the desert. The desert is any experience of loss, minimization, deprivation or death of self. The desert is obviously a painful place to be, but this verse reminds me that the desert is also a place of opportunity if I can welcome it. The desert is a place where I can prepare for God’s arrival.
This is the opposite of what I want to do when I’m in the desert. My foremost desire when I find myself in the desert is to get out of the desert. The desert is barren. It’s empty. It appears lifeless.
When I sit with people in spiritual direction, talking about the desert often brings tears. Sometimes, people can’t even fully voice what their experience in the desert is like. They feel too much pain, shame, and vulnerability. Occasionally, there is so much anxiety about their desert experience that people may not be able to speak honestly about the circumstances surrounding it.
These are all signposts of desert life. In the desert, there is a deprivation of something we need — like the loss of control, frustration of longing, or diminishment of identity. No one likes going through these things. However, during Advent, we read passages like the one from Isaiah, and we are reminded that traversing the desert is a fact of life. We all find ourselves in the desert from time-to-time. When we do, there is a voice calling to us. This voice makes an invitation to each of us: stop trying to flee the desert and instead prepare for God’s coming. This is the voice of the LORD calling to us: “prepare the way…you are in the perfect spot to welcome my arrival.”
Desert spirituality has a rich history in Christianity. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness. Jesus was tempted in the desert. But it wasn’t until the end of the third century that a movement arose of Christians actively seeking out the desert for spiritual transformation.
The father of this movement was a man named Anthony the Great. He was great because he was willing to become small. He followed Jesus’s example of descent, and he was able to welcome the stripping and minimization that the desert brings. Anthony is called a desert Father because so many people would eventually follow the path that he took into the desert. They are an example to us that the desert can be a place of profound spiritual transformation. When we are stripped of the normal trappings of life that we rely on for a sense of self, we discover God in deeper more transformative ways.
The lesson for you and me is that we too can grow in the desert. When you go through an experience that feels deeply painful, pause and remember that this could be an opportunity to welcome God’s arrival.
Most of us find these opportunities almost weekly, if not daily. Life brings a regular bombardment of diminutions of self. You may have a friendship that leaves you feeling insecure. You may be overlooked at work. Your significant other may reject you or wound you in painful ways. You may struggle with sibling rivalry around the holidays. Or maybe you are facing illness or physical limitations from injury or disease. There are many ways we can experience desert-like conditions in life.
When you find yourself in the desert, listen. God’s voice calls out to you: “Prepare the way for the LORD.” You needn’t flee. Welcome the things that make you smaller, weaker, and less important. Welcome the loss of control. Welcome the rejection, wounds, and hurt. These things are painful, but they help you prepare for God’s arrival in your life.
This Advent, I’ve been considering what parts of my life feel like the desert. There are a few. I hate them and I want so badly to run from them. But in Advent I’m reminded that this season is all about accepting the desert and holding onto hope that Christ will join me there.
If we don’t pray our way through the desert, it can destroy us. It is in the act of prayerfully welcoming the desert and turning towards God that the desert is transformed from a wasteland for the self into a watering hole for the soul. It becomes a place of new beginnings. It is the place of preparation for God’s arrival within us.
What part of your life feels like the desert to you? I wonder how you might pray and discover God’s arrival in the midst of your own experience of desert life?