Hills and Valleys

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. ~Baruch 5:1-9

Building roads is hard work.  Building roads over valleys and hills and mountains is harder.    You have to blow up that mountain, level that hill, and make a raised highway through that valley.   It's hard work.  In the old days, it was dangerous work as well.  Before explosives, it was so hard that God had to do it because we couldn't.

Bringing the mountains low is not an easy thing to do.   Neither is crossing a mountain without it having been made low.   I'm a little strange in that I believe that when Jesus said the time is coming and is now here when the Kingdom of God shall appear on the earth, he didn't mean blow the whole thing up and start over.  I think he meant right here, right now, usher in the kingdom of God.   We have to get ready to be able to do it, that's what Church is for, and we have to do it in the world in which we live right now because that's the Gospel.

It's actually happening.

 Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  

 And the harbinger's mother is old and barren when she becomes pregnant, and meets her young cousin, the Messiah's mother, who starts talking about her unborn child.   

He has mercy on those who fear him *
    in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
    he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

I'm pretty sure this is class warfare.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

Yep.

    and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

In plain English (translated from Aramaic to Greek to plain English)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

This is the Kingdom of God.  It works better if we all work together to fill the hungry with good things, so the rich don't necessarily have to go away empty, but that doesn't always work out.  Right here, right now, this is actually happening... so we should do what we're told and get to it.  God is going to make this happen... and he's doing it, right now, through us.