Isaiah 48:17-19
Matthew 11:16-19
Our reading from Isaiah is short today. It’s just three verses. But those verses contain so much. Here God speaks with a tone that is tender and deliberate:
‘This says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is good for you. I lead you in the way you must go.’
There are resonances of the Exodus and the wandering in the wilderness. In those wilderness years the Israelites needed to rely wholeheartedly on being led by God. Every step they took was a step towards freedom. In the next few lines God’s tone becomes wistful:
‘If only you had been alert to my commandments, your happiness would have been like a river, your integrity like the waves of the sea.’
Israel now lives in exile in Babylon and can’t avoid looking back and taking stock of the missed opportunities and times when they fell short of the demands of the covenant. But help is at hand because God has promised to redeem them. They’ll leave Babylon with the promise of restoration and new life. Regret at how things may have turned out in our lives is a real burden of our human condition. There’s a kind of dull ache when you realise that you missed an opportunity that may have changed some aspect of your life.
In the Gospel today there’s a similar theme of not listening and missing an opportunity. This time it’s about failure to recognize the Kingdom. This text pulls me up short. It’s so easy to see only the difficulties and hurdles that need to be navigated in any given day and to miss the small moments of love and grace. Advent gives me the opportunity to step back and to notice.
How can you be open to God’s Kingdom today?