Monday, December 16, 2002
Monday, December 16, 2002
A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight
in the desert a highway for our God.
Thomas Long of Princeton Seminary, commenting on this event, says, "There's a kind of irony
here. Week after week, those of us who preach stand in the pulpit and announce implicitly or
explicitly, 'I have a word from the Lord.' No one usually complains (not usually anyway). No
alarmed ushers bound into the pulpit to drag us away. But let a stranger stand up in the balcony
with a word and all decorum breaks loose. An unexpected voice from an unexpected angle.
Maybe, just maybe, the man was Isaiah, with a true and disturbing word from the Lord, or
perhaps he was Ezekiel; half crank, half prophet, visionary and eccentric. We'll never know. The
point here is that God's word often comes from the balcony! It surprises us...disturbs
us...embarrasses us...coming from places we least expect it. How like our God."
(Isaiah 40.3
NRSV)
One Sunday morning, a neatly dressed man disrupted a worship service in a suburban church.
Right in the middle of the service, the man stood up in the balcony and shouted in a clear voice,
"I have a word from the Lord!" Immediately alert and ready, ushers sprang like gazelles up the
balcony stairs and escorted the man out the front doors of the church and into the street.
Dear Jesus, help to be ready to hear an unexpected word from you during this season of
Christmas. Amen.
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