Music transports us, moves us, carries us into the future, and lets us equally feel homesick for days past, even as we hold dear this very moment, here, exactly where we are. What I love about this piece Lisa Bond chose for us today is that, it unites us across so many centuries and so many cultures, and helps us to remember that, in every time and place we have been people, who long for God and who long for God’s way.

Today’s text is influenced by the most ancient promises from Isaiah on which we hang our Christmas hopes, six, seven, eight centuries before Christ. The people of Isaiah’s day had their own struggles—wars and rumors of wars, illness, infighting, injustice—their story can so easily be our story when we open our ears to it.