This text is used for the Lectionary Year B on December 7, 2014.

It’s hard for those of us separated by more than twenty-five centuries to understand the enormity of what the people of God were told in Isaiah 40. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed.”  Good news is probably far too anemic a description to encapsulate what these words represented to people whose entire world had been turned upside down. Continue reading →