God is the Word indeed. God is the Voice and all the promises given.

In the beginning was the Word. But what use is that knowledge when the world in which we live is a shattered landscape, with wars and rumors of wars. How can we square the Prologue of John with the Evening News? How can we sing Isaac Watts' song in this strange land in which friends and foes are hard to distinguish and darkness seems to be ever at our right hand? Code Yellow. Code Orange. Are we moving through a spectrum of deeper colors and into even darker times?

I open the paper and read of tunnels under Palestinian camps that provide transport for weapons and terror. On the television I see Sharon's walls rise up between Palestinian farmers, the water and their fields to punish even the innocent with hunger, poverty and thirst.

In countries around the world, grown men hold grudges worthy of adolescents. Children age quickly without maturing as they are raised in a hot house atmosphere of hate and death. Young men in uniforms shoot other young men who faces they cannot see, whose names they cannot even pronounce.

But all our distance and our lack of familiarity cannot disguise the deeper spiritual reality. Brothers are killing brothers. Sisters are killing sisters. The children of God are slaughtering their siblings in the sight of the one that loves them all. We lay carnage at the foot of the manger.

The God of Abraham must be weeping a river of tears as the guilty and the innocent fall in this withering crossfire like fields cut down months before the harvest. All that is left of the budding wheat and the lanky weeds is stubble. There is no fruit in these fields but death.

Young men and women who wear no uniforms, and hold no hope, strap explosives on their bodies and becoming the walking dead. Their deafening end is a sound and a fury leading to nothing but an increase in mourning and the spread of the plague of despair and rage that threatens to wash us all away. Has there ever been a time so mean, a situation so intractable?

This is an instance that validates the value of knowing the stories of the bible. We are not alone in our experience. The lesson from Isaiah comes from a time when the land was so broken and barren that it went by the name "Forsaken". There was no security. The walls were breached, the people were hungry, and the streets were unlivable. Anyone could enter and take whatever, or whomever, they wanted. Most of the able bodied population had been hauled off into exile years before when a conquering army had sacked not only the houses of the rich but had looted the contents of the temple. The sick and the weak had been left behind to fend for themselves while the wise and the able were enslaved in a distant land. Now a handful of exiles had returned. But the work of rebuilding, and securing the means of food and water was an overwhelming task.

In such a threatening atmosphere and during a time of hard scrabble subsistence living one might expect a faint spirit and murmured words of despair. But Isaiah stands in the rubble and rejoices right out loud. His words are words of hope, a balm for a ruined land and a wounded people.

Isaiah's words are not the self-generated "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" sound bites that a modern motivational speaker might offer. Isaiah is not depending on his own strength. He is not responding to the hidden opportunities around him. Isaiah is not detailing a clever plan that will make all things right.

Isaiah is not focused on surface appearances. He is looking right through the desolation all around him. Isaiah lets the present difficulties fade from center stage so that the heart of the matter and the hope of the future can rest on him, and in him, and through him be proclaimed to others.

He has raised his arms to heaven and God has clothed him in shining raiment. Salvation, Righteousness and Praise slip down over Isaiah's head, covering his heart and opening his mouth. He speaks in exultation, rejoicing in the faithfulness of God. Isaiah sees a vision of God's hope, not the ashes of man's current endeavors.

This God is the God of Israel and Palestine, of Iraq, Afghanistan and America.
This faithful God loves the exile and the one who returns home.
This is the God who comes to broken places and scorched earth
and clothes the people with hope.

God promises hope. God promises faith. God promises presence.
And for those willing to be embraced by God's vision,
God promises transformation and new life.

There are no hopeless situations, only people who have ceased to hope, for a time.
But God sends the prophets and they speak God's word of hope.
Lord, send us prophets, now, to speak of peace and your vision of streets to live in.

There is neither time nor place where a spiritual vacuum can prevail forever,
remaining empty of faith and devoid of meaning. God draws near.
Even if we were to cease to believe, and to lose our grip on the last shred of our faith,
God will not let go of us. He sent his living Word to dwell among us on Christmas morning.
And God's spirit goes this day where God chooses;
light in the darkness, life in the world..

Even if the walls around us fall, God can raise up prophets out of the stones.
Lord, send us prophets, now, to speak of peace and a vision of streets to live in.

God faithfulness extends through all things,
like tiny green shoots that rise inexorably out of scorched earth
or crocuses that poke up and break through a lifeless crust of ice and snow.
God is the Voice, the Word, the maker, and keeper, of promises.

So do not let the pictures in the Evening News or the words of the papers overwhelm you.
Do not let the shaking of foundations or the breach of temple walls lead you to despair.
Do not let even the pressing difficulties in your own life rob you of hope.

Isaiah stood in the rubble and saw the promises of God. Isaiah stood clothed in hope.
Isaiah stands before us robed in exultation because God made it so.
The Word was in the beginning and the babe was born to Mary
and the spirit is God's gift to those who believe.
God is the voice, the Word and the promise. In Him is our salvation.

But how can we grasp the Living Word? God comes incarnate and we memorialize the event by kneeling at cardboard mangers watching children dressed as kings and cows bow in adoration toward a plastic doll. We consume flat bread and store bought wine, week after week, sometimes in remembrance, sometimes in distraction.

But these pale symbols point beyond our faltering attention, through mystery and light,
to a truth that is bigger than the world, somehow both in and outside time,
an eternal melding of the human and the divine,
An exemplar to us all, but one that may seem quite out of reach.

But it is not we who do the reaching. We do not grasp God, or even His Son.
It is God who grasps us, draws us, and draws near to us:
In the beginning, the meantime, and at the ultimate end.

We are being changed like stones worn down by water.
We are being changed in the blink of an eye.
We are being changed by a God who loves us enough to give us hope,
to answer our faith, and to show up in our lives if we will but make room.

So watch for green shoots that will rise from the ashes.
Look for flowers breaking through the snow.
Raise your hands in prayer and wait to be clothed
in the raiment of righteousness and praise.

O come Emmanuel, O Prince of Peace, and name us anew.
Turn under the ashes of this world and raise up instead a garland of gladness.
Let us become a crown of beauty in your hand
and not a crown of thorns upon your head.
Help us become a glittering diadem,
our hearts like light, our lives like yours,
O Voice that rolls the stars along.
O Word from the beginning; O promise that never fails;
Come Prince of Peace, O come.
Amen.