Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Wisdom Wednesday: Highway To Hell

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, December 6, 2023, and we are in the season of Advent, and during the next four weeks we at Peakland are considering this book, All the Good: A Wesleyan way of Christmas. Yesterday morning, I was with Peakland’s Ruth Circle, the group of women of our church who gather each month for fellowship, devotions, and to raise funds for local missions. They are strong in faith and generous with their gifts. They gifted me yesterday with this hand towel that they decided was just perfect for me, their pastor – it reads, The fact that there’s a Highway to Hell, but only a Staircase to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers. It’s perfect! Now with all respect to AC/DC who sang Highway to Hell, the prophet Isaiah wrote several hundered years ago about the Highway for our God. The prophet Isaiah is writing to the Jewish people some 600 or so years before Jesus. His people live in exile. Their homeland has been conquered by the Babylonians, who tore down their capital city, who tore down their Temple, the home of God, and the people wonder has God abandoned them? Their souls, their lives are as dry and desolate as the desert. During this dry dark time, the prophet Isiah has words of comfort from God for his people. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for God.” I love that image of a desert in the highway for God. What that says to me is that when I am feeling lost and alone, when I am feeling deserted, and hope seems as rare as rain the desert, then God makes the way toward me. God is crossing the mountains and the rivers and whatever else is separating me from God, to find me, to love me and to bring me home. Isaiah’s message isn’t just for me. G od’s love and God’s highway isn’t just for me. However it is with your soul this day and this Advent season, God is making a way to you and to all of us. In the first chapter of our book, All the Good, the writer Rev. Dr. Lacey Warner describes the ways God has given us to get on that highway to God, to let God’s love flow in our lives. We are to do works of piety and works of mercy. Works of piety are worship and prayer and communion and reading the scriptures. Works of piety are words of kindness and words of forgiveness that we give to each other because God has been kind and forgiving to us. Works of mercy, those are the ways we can offer comfort and care for others. Just this past Sunday, at our church’s Advent mission fest, the good and generous folks at Peakland donated gift cards for foster families to use and salvation army stockings for children, dozens of hats and scarves and gloves for Chase the Chill to hand out this winter, and hundreds of canned goods for both Daily Bread and Parkview. Those are great acts of mercy. The good works of mercy and piety are the ways God has given us to stay close to God and to stay close to each other and all of our neighbors. Works of mercy and works of piety are the ways God helps do all the good we can. Consider yourself invited to join us here at Peakland United Methodist Church on God’s highway through the desert. Join us for worship on Sundays here at the church and worship online, find your place here as we continue reaching, serving all, and extending God’s table. Reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com . Thanks be to God.