What's your lifeless desert?

As we prepare to receive more of the peace of Christ this Christmas, we can use today's first reading to see what still needs healing or repentance:

How is your life like a desert, dry and lifeless except for a few prickly cactuses?

Are you thirsty for more of God? In what area of your life do you feel parched?

Are you feeble in your attempts to become more like Jesus?

Are your knees weak as you travel the difficult road of holy living?

Are you controlled and paralyzed by fear? Any fear – even the smallest one – paralyzes us from moving ahead into the life that God wants for us.

How are you blind? Are you unable to see the good that's coming from a bad situation or the hand of God working in your life or in the life of someone who's causing you to worry? Are you blind to the presence of Jesus in others because he's hidden under the garbage of their sins? Are you blind to how very, very much God loves you and wants to help you?

What has God been telling you that you can't hear? Maybe it's his guidance? Or his love song that he sings to you? Or his dreams for you?

What part of your journey toward heaven is too difficult for you? What lame excuses are you using for permission to sit down on the curb?

How has fear kept your tongue silent when you should be speaking up? Or what have you been saying that's so unlike Jesus that you sound horrible instead of singing of God's glory?

In what areas of your life are the jackals who tempt you still lurking, keeping you in sin?

In what ways do you act foolishly? What the world considers wise the Lord knows to be foolish. What worldly wisdom are you trusting?

How are you like a lion? Is there anyone you've been devouring with unkind words or impatience or contempt or bullying?
Well, the Good News is, as Isaiah points out: The Lord has ransomed us! We can escape from these peace-stealing maladies.

Today's Gospel reading shows us that Jesus was overflowing with God's power so that he could minister to people. He wants to minister to you, too. We all need this help to stay on the highway that's called the holy way. It's Jesus who strengthens the hands that are feeble and the knees that are weak.

We are like the paralytic who allowed his friends to lower him to Jesus for a healing. By humbling ourselves and allowing Christian friends to help us, we reach the power of Christ.

And then he says to us, "My friend, your sins are forgiven." With that Word, we are healed. We have peace again. With that Word, all the good things that Isaiah prophesied are becoming true for us.