Isaiah 40:1-11 • Promise of restoration
After so many years of suffering the brutality of exile, the people of Israel are confronted with the prospect of restoration and a message of comfort from the Prophet. What a message of “Peace” for our second Sunday of Advent! Not such an easy thing, to let Peace into our hearts and into a world in which “comfort” has been so far away. Yet it is not us who makes this change—it is God who “relents” of the harshness of the sentence. It is a moment of mercy from a God who truly cannot stop loving the beloved children of Life.