A voice calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3)

I always imagined the desert in this passage to be like the image in my mind of the Sahara Desert, and the rolling dunes I had seen in pictures. It would be hard, I thought, to maintain a straight line in the shifting Sahara with sand everywhere you could see. It didn’t seem stable enough to support a working highway.

Nevertheless the prophet Isaiah had written of a voice calling out the message to straighten the wilderness through the desert. I thought that it must be an internal wilderness, a spiritual wilderness of uncertainty that God was calling His people to straighten, that He Himself might bring new life to them and enter their lives.

With the upheavals and changes and difficulties our world today experiences, the call to straighten and open a highway for God seems even more urgent thanin Isaiah’s time. The call is more focused since Jesus’ resurrection, leading God’s people straight to His heart. The apostle John wrote, This is how we know that we live in Him, and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His son to be the Savior of the world. . . and so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. ( 1 John 4:13 &16) John made a straight highway when he wrote these words, for he reached the hearts of both God Himself and His many people who could come to perceive Him in their own lives thanks to John’s testimony.

Before Jesus began his ministry John the Baptist was preaching and teaching in the wilderness of Judea. He was a voice calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight paths for Him.”(Matthew 3:3) The Romans might have interpreted this message to build a literal road, but the Hebrews knew the words of Isaiah, and that John’s message was personal to every single soul to open their eyes and hearts to a straight highway to their God.

The straight path in my life is daily Bible reading. I read to hear the voice that speaks a straight highway to my understanding of the presence and will of God. Of course there are dry passages like the desert itself that occur, but they’re followed by straight highways to the Lord. I look forward to more in 2026.

Love in Him,

Prue