Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.
And all God’s children shall see together the glory of the Lord.

When Baruch prophesied to the people of Israel,
they knew what it was to down in the valley.
They knew what it was like to struggle
while climbing the high mountains.
Life was not easy for a people who had failed to hear
his earlier prophecies.
Their lack of faithfulness had led them into exile
and they had become a people in mourning and in misery.

Today’s first reading begins,
Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery.
It was Baruch’s way of saying,
“Quit whining!
God will take care of you!
God will make all things new!
God will give you a share in God’s glory.”
“Look,” he seems to say,
“better days ahead!”

No matter how down in the dumps you may feel,
no matter what challenges seem to lie ahead,
God will make a way where there does seem to be one.
God will life you out of the valleys
and lower the mountains that seem to be in the way!
God will make life better than you can even imagine!

While the message was originally intended for an Israel in exile,
today it is a promise for us as well.
No matter what difficulties we may face,
God is with us.
God is leading us to better days.

Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.
And all God’s children shall see together the glory of the Lord.

The Psalmist knows God’s promise fulfilled.
The Psalmist is looking back at what God has done
and cries out
The Lord has done great things for us;
we are filled with joy.
The Psalmist knows that all God’s children have seen together the glory of the Lord…

Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.
And all God’s children shall see together the glory of the Lord.

Paul, in his letter to the Philippians,
reminds them and us,
that the one who began a good work in you
will continue to complete it
until the day of Christ Jesus.
Like the Philippians, we don’t know when that day will come,
but Paul assures us that it will come
and that until it does come,
God will be blessing us
and helping us
so that our love will increase ever more and more.

Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.
And all God’s children shall see together the glory of the Lord.

As our Gospel begins today,
Luke sets the stage for the rest of the Gospel.
He tells us exactly when the story of our salvation begins.
It begins in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee.
While those dates may not be very important to us,
they do remind us that our salvation came
in a very specific place and at a very specific time.
Luke reminds us that our God is not somewhere out there,
that our God is not around in some distant past
or in some distant future.
Luke is reminding us
that our God comes at just the right time and place,
in the past and in the future,
but also in the present time.
And because our God is coming even now
We must prepare the way of the Lord.
because God is filling in every valley
and God is straightening the way for us.
God is making the rough ways smooth
so that all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.
And all God’s children shall see together the glory of the Lord.

Advent is not about preparing for Christmas.
It is about preparing for the rest of our lives.
It’s about being ready to encounter the living God
every day and everywhere.

It’s about recognizing the presence of Christ
in ourselves and in the people around us.
It’s about Emmanuel, God with us.

Advent is not about preparing for an event
that happened almost two thousand years ago
and many thousands of miles away.
Avent is not just about longing for a day in the future
when everything will be sunny and bright/
Advent is about the here and now.

If we would recognize God with us
here and now;
if we would live like we saw him all around us
each and every day;
if we treated everyone the way we treat those we love the most
at Christmas time
all year round,
then we would see together the glory of God
each and every day,
and in every person, place and creature we encounter
and then it would seem as if every valley were filled in
and every mountain and hill made low.

Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.
And all God’s children shall see together the glory of the Lord.