“Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” – Isaiah 40:3b

I hear the summons, Holy One, to lay aside
the poetry, the words and tunes, the voice,
and take up skills (I do not have) to build
a road, a path, a highway for your Way.

In my imagination, that highway would stream
across the plains into the setting sun
and I would squinting peer ahead
into the spreading light of glory.

My engineering skills, however, are more apt
to build a road that rolls and twists,
that dives precipitously down the hillsides, cracks
with perturbations of the Earth.

I am the grass, the flower of the field,
and with them I will grow and bloom,
then fall and fade. I cannot build a road
to match the word of God that stands forever.

A poem/prayer based on Isaiah 40;1-11, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year B, Second Sunday of Advent.

Photos by Eric Anderson.