The wilderness experience for the Hebrew children represents a troubling place. It is hostile terrain, and the basic necessities for survival are not present. There is a growing crisis that grows out of a fear of perishing. For Israel the wilderness represents a place of dislocation and the unfamiliar. It represents the very real threat for their life.
Read full transcript...One would think that the older I get, the more sermons and Bible studies I have under my belt, that the more routine, the more "been-there-done-that" response I might have to reading some of the same old texts year in and year out.
But I have found that the opposite has happened as I have gotten older. There are certain Bible texts that I can hardly read without weeping. This passage from Isaiah 11 is one of them. One would think that every Advent I would read it and realize that we're still far away from the kind of vision Isaiah is pointing to, so they're just words. But my lachrymose response is getting worse, it seems, and not better. And I think I know why.
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