“Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God.”  I have an amusing reaction to this line.  It reminds me of the line from a Joni Mitchell song of my youth “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot!”  As an avid hiker and naturalist I have always looked for trails that were not straight.  I see the problem not so much finding a straight path but limiting trips down side roads that turn into dead ends.

Maybe in today’s world the analogy would to set up a Google Map to get us to the right place.  The great thing about Google is that it lets you know the straightest path and how to get around roadblocks.  When you make a wrong choice it will guide you back to your destination without casting judgement, unless you get the dreaded command to make a U-turn at the next available opportunity.    John the Baptist has been sent to us to give us the message of repentance for those wrong turns we regularly make in our lives.  I see his message as the first step.  I must recognize my human flawed self and be sorry for my mistakes.  This lets us look at the coming of Jesus as he says “I am the way and the truth and the light”.  Every sojourner wants to learn from their missteps and know better the way to their destination. 

The second reading reveals another piece of our human nature.  We are a temporal people.  I am so inpatient!  I really don’t understand that time is a human experience and not the way God looks at creation.  Recently one of my cousins lost her daughter to a drug overdose.  She was a young single mom with 3 kids.  I think back on the blessings of my childhood and my parent’s support.  I feel for these three young children wondering what this loss will do to their lives.  Our call is to show compassion and to help where we can, not to understand why.  “We await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”  For me this is a season when we celebrate a new beginning, a new opportunity to show kindness and openness to God’s presence in our lives.