"Refresh! Renew! Relax! Rejoice!"

¹The wilderness and the desert will be glad,
     And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom;
     Like the crocus
²It will blossom profusely
     And rejoice with rejoicing and shout of joy
     The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
     The majesty of Carmel and Sharon
     They will see the glory of the LORD,
     The majesty of our God.
³Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
⁴Say to those with anxious heart,
     "Take courage, fear not
     Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
     The recompense of God will come,
     But He will save you."
⁵Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
     And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
⁶Then the lame will leap like a deer,
     And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy
     For waters will break forth in the wilderness
     And streams in the Arabah.
⁷The scorched land will become a pool
     And the thirsty ground springs of water;
     In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
     Grass becomes reeds and rushes.

Rejevenate.  Relax.  Repeat.  Experience the slowed down hiatus of a truly organic spa experience. Enjoy a warm hydrotherapy massage followed by an intensive moisturizing treatment featuring fresh botanicals. Your skin will be rejuvenated, your spirit soothed and your muscles relaxed as you experience our state of the art therapies in an idyllic setting. You deserve this---especially during these hectic weeks just before Christmas. Come to the Oasis. Your tensions will simply melt away.

Located in the tranquil Himalayan foothills, close to the mythological cities of Haridwar and Rishikesh, surrounded by graceful Sal forests, overlooking the peaceful Ganga as it meanders into the distance, Ananda is the spiritual pathway to the ultimate, discovered through the union of body, mind and soul.

Nearly a year ago my daughter and I spent a rejuvenating four days and three nights at the Ananda in India.

After we had been there less than 24 hours, I called George up in Dallas and told him I wasn't coming home.

This was the closest thing I could compare to dying and going to heaven. Reality set in when I had to give them my credit card at the end of the stay.

An experience of near total tranquility, being fed and pampered and cared for, physically and emotionally and spiritually rejuvenated. . .Eastern cultures are far better at doing this than this than Western. There is a deep sense that the body, mind, and soul are connected and must be functioning well, in harmony.

This gets close to what the prophet Isaiah is talking about. Ancient Hebrew culture is quite "eastern" in its sensibilities. In the Hebrew tradition, the physical body is just as important as the spiritual. Isaiah speaks of real, living things. Isaiah proclaims rest, renewal and refreshment. Isaiah couches his proclamation in terms of concrete, observable reality. The desert, the landscape, limbs being made whole, eyes unclouded, ears unstopped. The overflowing abundance of life-giving water.

For me, the spa image works very well. For you, it may be something different. For Isaiah, it was all about the water.

It was probably all about the water, because Israel is a rather dry place.

"The desert will be glad and the Arabah will rejoice and blossom".

The Arabah is part of a valley that runs north-south between the southern end of the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea and continuing further south where it ends at the Gulf of Aqaba. The southern Arabah is very hot and dry and virtually without rain. For the Arabah to rejoice and blossom, it is going to take a lot of water.

"The wilderness will rejoice and blossom like the crocus. It will burst into bloom."

Have you ever seen a crocus in a desert? Do they even grow there? Apparently so. Saffron Crocus is part of the familiar Crocus family. This plant was being cultivated as far back as the ancient Minoans in Greece (long before Isaiah wrote this passage!). The saffron crocus does bloom in the Israeli desert, when there is enough water.

The desert will rejoice greatly and shout for joy!

Barren land will become like the glory of Lebanon, full of beautiful cedar forests. The cedars of Lebanon are huge, majestic trees, evergreen.

The desert will be transformed. It will look like these fertile fields of Carmel. See how green and lush they are! Orchards and pasturelands abound. Here, from the sky, is another view of Carmel, this one of the Carmel Forest Spa Resort of Haifa, strangely enough!

The beautiful coast of Sharon will mirror what is going on in the greening and growing desert.

God's going to do this, the prophet says. God will refresh and renew the land, but not only the land. People will be renewed, too. The weak will be strengthened. The wobbly made strong. Far more lasting than a one-hour spa treatment, God will calm the anxious and restless heart. The one whose heart is worried, or hurried (and whose heart isn't?) This one will be enveloped by the peace-filled presence of God.

Miracles will happen. The blind will see.

     The physically blind restored? Perhaps. . .

     The spiritually blind enlightened? For sure.

     The blinders of pride and prejudice removed for good.

The ears of the deaf will be clear again.

     No more hearing aids, no more muffled messages.

     No more misunderstandings. No more "What did you say?"

     God's Word comes through loud and clear. God's Word changes things.

Miracles, you say? God still does that. God does.

Babies are on my mind as today we baptize Zachary & Katie. Here at LHPC we have seen seven baptisms this year, and there are still four more babies yet to be born in the next few months. If you doubt for a moment that God still does miracles, that God can create life out of something that was not there, think for a moment about babies.

There is a woman in our congregation who has witnessed hundreds, if not thousands of babies born. Recently, when we were talking about where do you see God, she said (something like) this. "When you are present at a birth, when you are there, and you have the chance to watch a new life come into the world, to see this beautiful perfect tiny human being, how can you not believe in God? How can you not believe in a Creator who fashioned the incredible intricacy of the human body?"

If God can still make babies, of course God can make the desert bloom.

If God can make the desert bloom, of course God can create an oasis of hope.

If God can create an oasis of hope, of course God can calm your anxious heart.

If God can calm your hammering heart, of course God can open your eyes. Of course God can help you see things you never noticed before. See yourself and others with a kind and healing balm that mellows the lines on your face and the furrow on your brow.

And if God can give you clear vision, God can also fix your hearing. God can tune you in to the sounds that truly matter. God can sound a clear strong call, a call you will not only hear but a call you will soon sing along with, a call to rejoice, rejoice, because God with us has come into the dry deserts of our lives, Immanuel has pitched his tent among us and invites us to come and rest because his burden is easy and is yoke is light.

If God can bring Godself to stoop into our physical reality, to take on human flesh with all its pain and all its pleasure, God can change you, too.

Come, bathe in the cool refreshing waters of baptism, the life-giving waters of hope. Refresh! Renew! Relax! Rejoice! Now, especially now, today, as you rush through your Christmas preparations, as you worry about getting everything done, as you wonder if everyone is going to make it to your house, take the time to allow God's Word to wash over you, to cleanse you of your tensions.

Refresh yourself with a spa that never runs dry, an experience that never ends, and rejoice.