Today’s Advent word, “HIGHWAY”, is also taken from the Isaiah lesson for the 3rd Sunday of Advent. Isaiah 35 includes this verse: A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty glad “fools shall not go astray”. It’s sometimes hard to figure out the way God wants us to trod. Often it makes no sense or not what “we” want, actually most often this is so. We resist cause we know better – am I right? Yet Isaiah insists there is a “holy way” for God’s people and on it we cannot go astray.

I often tell people I believe God honors our direction, our choices, our decisions if we enter into them prayerfully and carefully. I will leave you with a quote from Thomas Merton who says this far better than I can:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude