A Reflection for the 3rd Day of Advent – Year A
Psalm 124 | Isaiah 54:1–10 | Matthew 24:23–35
God is preparing to do something that will require more room than we have. This is Isaiah’s word to a people who have known barrenness and abandonment, and it is a fitting word for Advent, when we are asked to enlarge our expectation for what God might do.
The Psalmist opens with a song of testimony. “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side… then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us” (Psalm 124:1–4). This is a community looking back over their lives, recognizing what could have happened, and naming the One who made the difference. The teeth, the torrent, the snare, these are dangers the Psalmist lived through. And the song ends with a declaration that has anchored the faithful across centuries: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8).
Isaiah speaks to people who have known that same vulnerability. The prophet uses a painful image, a young woman cast off by her young husband, familiar in that day, though no less terrible for its familiarity. Yet God does not minimize what has been endured. Instead, God speaks a word of expansion: “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). The call to enlarge comes before the filling. We are invited to prepare the infrastructure for blessing.
Then comes the promise that holds all the others together. God reaches back to Noah, to that first great deliverance marked in the sky, and says: this is what my faithfulness looks like. “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed” (Isaiah 54:10). That word, steadfast, carries the Hebrew hesed, the constant, unchanging, all-encompassing love of God. Whatever you need is in the hesed of God. Mountains may move. Hills may be taken away. But this love remains.
In Matthew, Jesus speaks of cosmic upheaval, the sun darkened, the moon failing, stars falling from heaven. Everything we think is fixed is shown to be shakeable. And yet Jesus declares: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). The sun, the moon, the stars, even heaven and earth, all of these may pass. But the words of Jesus, the promises of God, the steadfast love, these endure.
In Advent, we are people who watch and wait. We do not know the day or the hour. Yet this uncertainty is meant to produce readiness, hopeful expectation. We wait in confidence because we trust the One whose words stand forever.
As you move through this day, let this word settle into you: steadfast. Not your steadfastness, but God’s. The love that outlasts mountains. The promise that holds when everything else shakes. In a world of shifting ground, here is something that does not move.