comfort ye my people

in the cantata this year we are singing two songs from handel's messiah, which is so challenging and so fun at the same time.  they are so powerful.  i was trying to decide what to study when i found a suggestion on a website to study all the scriptures in the messiah,  perfect i thought.  so today i studied isaiah 40:1-4

  Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.  Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:

i don't pretend to know everything about isaiah or just like totally get him or anything, but i happen to like that his style is poetic and that there are many different layers or ways to understand.

the first thing i liked was the comfort part.  the message of Christ is comforting.  he says, for example, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."--isaiah 1:18  that's comforting to me.  his message is that 'your iniquity is pardoned'. "Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth break forth into singing. Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel, who hath ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free."--D&C 128:22. lots of things make us prisoners.  sin, weakness, frailty (did i just say weakness twice??), life circumstances, death, ignorance, etc.  all have a way of locking us up.  but the savior is the key.  he sets us free.

for the second part, i thought of myself as the earth--as the land.  so it is a call to prepare myself, my heart, my life for the coming of the Lord.  and without the living waters offered by the Saviour, i am a desert, parched and barren.  i need to straighten my crooked ways by following his commandments, following him, doing as he would do.  and he promises to clean me up.  get rid of my high places (pride for example) , and make my rough places smooth.  i don't know if this makes sense to anyone.  but that's how i thought of it today as i studied.

here's a pic of me in the crooked parched desert in egypt, in a high place looking at a valley with a bad case of hat-head.  i hope one day the Lord can make something out of the desert of me that i offer him.