"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice with joy and shouting.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God." (Isaiah 35:1-2)
Apparently, God's intention isn't just to get people into heaven; God intends to bring all of creation fully to life.
That vision certainly includes our hope of life beyond death, or as our sloppy shorthand might put it, "going to heaven when we die," but it is also much bigger. When God moves in the world, it is not merely to collect up the human beings in order to whisk them away off to float on the clouds somewhere--it is to bring the whole world to life, turning even dry and barren waste lands into blossoming gardens. God isn't interested in plucking us up and taking us somewhere "better" while the world burns; rather, God is engaged in renewing the earth completely. The news of God's coming is good news for the crocuses, too.
This passage from the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, reminds us of just how widely God's concern reaches. As the prophet pictures God acting in the world, and what it will be like when God's Chosen Anointed One (or "Messiah") comes, he doesn't limit his description to human terms. We don't hear things like "You'll know the Messiah is coming because the markets will all be up," but rather the prophet says, "When God passes through, you'll see the crocus blooming in the desert." We human beings are a part of God's grand restoration project, but we are not the only ones. We are a part of the vast and varied family of God, absolutely; but we are not the only members of that family. God cares about the stream beds in the wilderness, the flowers waiting for the rain so they can burst into bloom, as well as the wolves and lambs we heard about last week, who are waiting a new and peaceable kingdom where old enemies can be reconciled and no one has to be afraid of being hunted by anybody. All of it belongs. All of it is a part of the community--the commonwealth, so to speak--of God's Reign.
When we forget that, we end up shrinking our Advent hope into merely afterlife insurance. We end up caricaturing God into the bearded fellow from the cartoons who lives up on a cloud and only cares about snatching up a handful of well-behaved saints to live in the sky while everything "below" crumbles. And we end up missing out on just how big a family God has brought us into. We have a place beside our cousins the crocuses and cats, our uncles the mountains, our aunts the butterflies, and all of our human sisters and brothers as well. God intends to make it all new, not merely to settle for a segment of us and giving up on the rest of creation.
Hold onto that truth today--and throughout the rest of this season. The One we are waiting for isn't merely recruiting for members of an elite social club; the coming Christ is intent on renewing all of creation. The child in the manger isn't born just for the sake of getting a few souls onto the Good List; he has come to bring everything and everyone more fully to life. And we are longing for more than just a record close for the stock market--we are waiting for the restoration of all things.
Come, Lord Jesus, and make all things new.
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