A Reflection for the Second Week of Advent
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Psalm 72:1–7, 18–19 | Isaiah 40:1–11 | John 1:19–28
We are deep enough into Advent now that the waiting has become familiar. The candles multiply on the wreath, and the world around us accelerates toward its own frantic celebrations. Yet the lectionary invites us to slow down, to consider a sobering truth about ourselves and a comforting truth about God. Isaiah speaks it plainly: we are like grass, and God’s word stands forever.
The prophet does not flatter us. “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades… but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:6–8). We are fickle. We are inconsistent. Our commitments waver, our attention drifts, our resolve softens. Like grass, we bend with every wind that blows. Like flowers, our beauty is real yet fleeting. Isaiah names what we know about ourselves when we are honest.
Yet the word of God stands. Here is the contrast that anchors the whole passage. Human constancy fails; divine faithfulness endures. The Hebrew Scriptures have a word for this quality in God: hesed, often translated as steadfast love or loving-kindness. Hesed is the covenant faithfulness that does not depend on our faithfulness. It is the love that remains when we wander. It is the promise that holds even when we forget. God’s commitment to His people flows from His own character, not from anything we bring to the relationship.
This is why Isaiah can speak comfort to a people who have failed. “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1). The comfort rests on something more reliable than human performance. It rests on hesed, on the God who tends His flock like a shepherd, who gathers lambs in His arms, who leads gently. The shepherd’s care does not depend on whether the sheep have wandered. The shepherd comes because that is who the shepherd is.
John the Baptist embodies this message in the wilderness. When asked who he is, he points away from himself: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord'” (John 1:23). John knows he is grass. His role is to announce the One whose word stands forever, the One who comes to embody God’s hesed in human flesh.
The Psalmist completes the picture. Psalm 72 sings of a king whose righteousness endures, who “defends the cause of the poor” and delivers the needy (Psalm 72:4). This is what hesed looks like in action: consistent, faithful attention to those who cannot secure their own flourishing. God’s promises do not waver with political winds or economic tides. They stand because God stands.
Now, let us carry this word in our hearts: hesed. You may feel your own inconsistency keenly. You may know yourself to be grass. Yet the word of God stands, and that word is steadfast love. God’s faithfulness does not rise and fall with yours. It flows from who He is. Live into this truth.