At one point while I was in the Army, I was sent to a leadership school at Ft. Huachuca, AZ.  Ft. Huachuca is in the far south of Arizona, in the mountains, on the Mexican border.  The terrain there is very rough: mountains, valleys, hills, ridges, draws, spurs, and all of it desert. Part of the graduation requirement was to complete a land navigation course.  We were dropped off individually on the land navigation course with a quart of water and a terrain map with little dots marked on it.  The object was to navigate around the course, find the points, write down the numbers, and make your way back.  Oh, and there was a time limit of 3 hours.  Because of the distances between points and the size of the area, that meant one pretty much had to trot the whole time.

The really hard part was not trying to find the points, but was crossing the terrain.  Up and down, over and around, climbing out of gullies, slipping on loose soil and rocks, and having to do it pretty fast. 

Life is very much like that – knowing your goal and its location is often not that hard.  But getting there, crossing the terrain, moving through the ups and downs, surmounting the obstacles, that can be the truly challenging part.  Unfortunately, some folks never figure out how to do it, and they lapse into despair and give up.

Sometimes the obstacles in our lives can seem overwhelming.  We don’t know which way to turn or how to get over them.  There is only one thing to do in that situation.  Let God show us the way.

That is the focus of our readings today on this Second Sunday of Advent.

Here is the context of our first reading.  The Kingdom of Judah has been utterly defeated in a war with the Chaldean Empire.  Jerusalem was captured, and most of the population has been hauled off into Exile – taken hundreds and hundreds of miles across the desert away from their homes and forced to live as a completely subjugated people.  The situation is utterly hopeless, and the very few people left in Jerusalem are in a constant state of dismay and mourning. 

Into that situation steps the prophet Baruch who basically tells the people not to worry about it.  Stop being miserable and mourning.  “Put on the splendor of glory from God….” In other words, let God take care of it.  He will bring the captives back.  And not only will He bring the captives back, he will smooth out the path before them.  He will make it easy for them to return.  The few people left must have thought Baruch was out of his mind.

What happens?  After decades of exile, in the midst of this seemingly hopeless situation, the Chaldean Empire is defeated in a war with the Persian Empire and occupied.  One day, the Persian king Cyrus issues a decree, seemingly out of the blue, and tells the captive Jews that they can all go home.  On top of that, he gives them back everything that the Chaldeans had stolen from the Temple.  Finally, he tells them that he will order his governor in Judah to help them rebuild the Temple. 

This was quite a reversal of fortune for that community.  The psalm we have today, Psalm 126, is the psalm of joy and thanksgiving composed after the exiles’ return. 

Brothers and sisters, we human beings are extraordinary creatures – we are, in fact, the crowning glory of God’s creation.  We can do so much, invent so much, build so much, create so much, and overcome so many obstacles.  Despite all that, we are in so many ways also powerless.  

We forget that sometimes.  We can do so much that we forget how powerless we really are.  We forget that we are a mystery, even to ourselves.  We forget that we cannot even overcome the weaknesses and failings in our own lives.  We cannot overcome the power of sin in our hearts. 

When we forget those things, it is the essence of pride. 

Advent is the season to remember our powerlessness.  Advent is the season to take stock of the attitudes of our hearts over the past year and remind ourselves that we do not have to face our challenges alone.  In fact, if we try, we will fail. 

Our God comes to us.  He makes the paths straight.  He brings the mountains and hills low.  He overcomes the power of sin, for us as a people and for each of us as individuals. 

Only God can do this for us.  We cannot do it for ourselves.