posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
(My only blog post this week! Happy Thanksgiving!)
Prepare Ye the way of the Lord;
Prepare Ye the way of the Lord!
Stephen Schwartz begins the musical Godspell with those lyrics. That's the whole song; just those lines repeated several times.
And, although it isn't exactly an Advent carol, it is definitely a song of the season. It's taken from Isaiah chapter 40:
A voice of one calling in the desert:
'Prepare the way for the LORD;
make straight in the wilderness
a highway for our God.' - Is. 40:3 NIV
I've mentioned before that Godspell has some personal significance for me. Among other things, it became the first announcement of the turning of the seasons toward the celebrations of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The small church we were in for years always sponsored a Fall Festival on Oct. 31, to give kids an alternative to trick-or-treating. Each Sunday School teacher was responsible to host a game of some sort in his/her classroom. I was the youth teacher, and year after year I'd go in, clear the room, tape clear-contact-paper covered numerically adorned cards to the floor in a circle, place a huge bowl of fun-size candy in the middle, plug up my cd player, and invite kids to walk the circle for a piece of candy (there was no charge, although we did use some tickets that had to be earned in another area to do minimal crowd control). For one ticket, anyone could come in and circle the numbers until I stopped the music. Then all the walkers stopped and I drew a number -- the person standing on that number got to choose a piece of candy from the bowl, and I started the music back up and began it again. It was a sure thing...but sometimes it took a while for someone to actually end up on the number that won. The kids enjoyed it, and I usually ended up listening to the cd about 3 times through in the evening.
I think the second year we did it I took in my Broadway cast recording of Godspell and enjoyed it so much that from then on that was the Candy Walk music. So now that music is permanently attached in my brain to fall and the shift from 'Fall thinking' to 'holiday thinking'. We're in a much larger church now and, while we still do a fall festival, it is completely different and there is no Candy Walk, so at some point I have to pull out the Godspell cd and listen to it in the sewing room, just to help my internal calendar recognize the season.
Which is really the purpose of Advent celebrations, anyway, right? To mark the changing season...to get ready for what's ahead. Prepare the way of the Lord; prepare our hearts to make room for Him, prepare our ears to hear Him, prepare our spirits to follow Him.
Perhaps the wilderness in which we are to make the highway straight is our own self-serving thought patterns...how much easier for us to respond to God when we are not caught in the midst of our own agenda.
It's interesting that 'Prepare Ye' does not only appear in the beginning of Godspell...it's also at the end. After the Resurrection, we hear once more:
Prepare Ye the way of the Lord,
Prepare Ye the way of the Lord!
Advent doesn't end with the birth of Christ; we are *still* preparing the way. With maturity, Advent becomes a daily discipline...daily preparing, daily listening, daily following. The point is not that we only prepare for the few weeks in front of Christmas...the weeks of Advent on the calendar are now a good time to evaluate and reflect: Am I really actively preparing the way...or am I subconsciously on auto pilot? What am I doing to prepare the way of the Lord in my daily life? How does my life reflect an expectation of the coming of Christ so that others can see that straight road?
Syllabus:
The Expectant Season: A Blogged Bible Study
Introduction: Nov. 18
Lesson 1: Nov. 25 Prepare Ye
Lesson 2: Dec. 2 Look at that Rose
Lesson 3: Dec. 9 The Chant
Lesson 4: Dec. 16 We've Been Waiting....
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