Comfort, comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
    that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
    the way for the Lord[a];
make straight in the desert
    a highway for our God.[b]
Every valley shall be raised up,
    every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
    the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
    and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Isaiah 40:1-5

I’ve worked at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge for the past two summers. This isn’t a mystery to anyone who has known me for any length of time because it’s all I talk about most days. It’s a great job with a focus on the things above, and it really feels like work worth doing. Camp life, of course, isn’t so glamorous. Back aches from thin mattresses, bug bites in unsightly places, and the unencumbered sun keeping you seconds away from a heat stroke at all times would be enough to deter anybody reasonable. But the will of a Look Up Lodge Summer Staff is as determined as it is stupid, and all of these things are not enough to keep us away. Weeks before campers even get there, we spend our time preparing skits, teaching Bible lessons to each other while our peers act like children to help immerse us, and doing various landscaping tasks around the camp’s grounds. One such notorious gardening task is mulching. Seven to ten of our bravest staffers go knee deep in a truck bed full of mulch for the better part of the day, tossing it all over camp. It’s unapologetically hot, feels like it’s taking forever, and you’ll be finding mulch on your person in places you didn’t think it was possible for it to go. At the end of the day, it isn’t about the attaboys or the glory of yard work, it’s about making the place we love nicer than ever before to make it that much sweeter for the thousands of campers we get to serve throughout the summer, anxiously awaiting their arrival.

The world of the Old Testament was filled with anticipation and longing. The promised Savior couldn’t come fast enough, and the prophet Isaiah tells the people of Israel exactly what to expect of their long-awaited king. In Isaiah 40:1-5, the prophet speaks of a voice crying, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” He goes on to speak of the power Christ will hold to raise up valleys and level mountains, literally turning the world upside down. In the ESV, it says in verse 2, “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.” The word “warfare” in this translation stuck out to me. The people of Israel had been yearning for the presence of their Savior to deliver them from oppression, and the prophet promises just that. Maybe not in the way that they expected but certainly in the way that they needed.

He goes on to say in verses 6-8 how we are like grass and flowers being blown in the wind. Someday, the grass and flowers will wither and be blown away for good. But the Scripture promises that the Word of God will stand forever. All the mulch that we laid at Look Up Lodge certainly won’t last forever. An inopportune rain or a kid who throws a fistful of it into the lake is enough to ruin all of our hard work. But the power of our God is greater than our own. It’s a power that promises to make the rough grounds a plain, ceasing strife and hardship against sin forever, and not even the rain or snotty children can mess that up.

Aiden Sweeney