In Alaska the light of a summer's day is twenty-two and a half hours long,
so noon and six o'clock have a way of slipping quietly from one to the other .

We moved in the timeless light over the tundra and the hills.
After many miles we crested a rise and saw the river just
a few hundred feet down the trail.

A silent man in ragged shorts, no shirt, and a faded baseball cap
stood knee deep in the greenery of a small garden by the water's edge.
His hair was long and stringy; a hoe was in his hand,
and the weeds fell slowly as he chopped at their roots.
He did not speak. He did not even look up while we were still on the hillside.
But he knew we were there.

He was one with the earth and the seasons,
and so few people came by his homestead that our scent on the wind
and the rustle of our nylon jackets was like a herald shouting our arrival.

Beyond the far border of the man's garden was the river's edge.
A little boat that had seen better days bobbed on its tether as the river currents danced.

It was July. The Homestead Act was still in effect.
If you staked the boundaries, filed your claim on time
and promised to spend the requisite months each year on the land,
fifteen acres could be yours.

We looked across the broad water at birch trees so big
that you couldn't put your arms around them and ferns that seemed to be chest high.
The air was warm and alive.
We longed to go across that river to the breath-taking beauty on the other bank
and claim it for our own.

Youth was in our veins. Summer was in the air.
But not in the water.
The ice and snow of higher places had mixed
with the summers' long days of light to produce water so cold
that I remember it as just barely liquid.
Water cold as death flowed between us and the land in which we might dwell.

The man with the hoe walked over, stood by the frigid water and spoke.
"You have two choices," he said, "You can swim it, or pay the price of the ferry."

Then he stated a price that rivaled the cost of transport on a craft
that could carry your car from one country to another.

We looked around for the ferry.
The cost he had indicated didn't seem to connect with anything within our vision.
We paused, silent in our confusion. So he put one foot in his raggedy boat.

"What'll it be?" he asked. We counted our cash. It would take everything we had.
Then we looked across the freezing water
to the beauty of the trees in summer and the promise of a new life, and we knew.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius,
when the Romans held power from the hillsides to the valleys,
and the High Priest colluded with the Romans when the currents were right,
the word of the Lord came to a man named John.

John went into all the region around the Jordan
proclaiming a baptism of repentance. He was offering a ritual cleansing
as a way of declaring new intent, finding new vision and discovering the kind of life that lies on the other side of forgiveness.

John walked through a landscape distorted by power and intrigues and told the truth.
We have choices to make.
"What'll it be?" this man by the river asked those who came to him.

The challenge is to make room for God,
to clear away whatever obstacles are in between God's promises and us.

The author of the Luke's gospel sees John the Baptizer
as the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy.
The one who proclaims "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight".

John, the son of Zechariah, stood by a river
and spoke of choices, of vision, and of promise.
John the Baptizer stood by the river offering transport
to a new life and the promise of even better things to come.

What does it take to prepare the way of the Lord?
Intent. Repentance. A willingness to get out of town, and a desire to cross the river.

We decide how we live our lives. We decide in matters great and small.
Intent matters.

To repent is to see anew, to have an after thought, a change of mind and orientation after reflection.
What is the life I am living? Is this what God wants for me?
Am I willing to change? Am I willing to be changed?

If we want to cross the river we have to be willing to get out of town.
We need to be willing to leave the familiar
and to risk what we know now for the new land that God promises.

Are we willing to ask ourselves the hard questions?
Is this really where I am called to be, what I am called to be doing?
Is this all there is to life?

Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Forgiveness may be free, but we might have to turn, or to travel, to see it.

Let us look across the river, at the beauty of a life of holiness and the promises of God.
Let us look within our hearts. What have we elevated far beyond its appropriate stature,
where have we let ourselves sink into places so low that the light barely reaches us?
Where have we wandered into paths so twisted or construed plans so tortured that we
cannot actual travel them except at our peril?

God seeks us even as we seek God. God can fill even the valleys of despair.
God can lower even obstacles we ourselves have elevated to height of mountains.
There is no road so crooked that it cannot become a way straight to the river's edge.
There is no going so rough that God cannot meet us even there
and journey with us all the way to the water.

All flesh shall indeed see the salvation of God when the valleys are filled, and the mountains lowered.
That is why Isaiah wrote and John proclaimed:
"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

We put on our packs, or lay down our burdens, to get ready for the journey.
When we have moved with intent we will come to stand by that water's edge.
At the edge we will come to understand that there is a cost to living in the truth
and then we will have to choose whether to pay it or to turn back.

But God will move mountains to meet us when we are truly willing to travel,
And the boat will be there when we are really ready to cross.

This is the promise from the land across the river.
This is the word of John.
This is the hope that flows through Advent and comes from the throne of God.