“In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3b). My friend Micah affectionately refers to his daughter as his AT walker, reminiscent of the all-terrain walkers from Star Wars, the two-legged ones that scouted in the wilderness on the forest moon of Endor. The day Micah’s daughter Eva was born, she almost didn’t make it. The umbilical cord was strangling her with every contraction. An emergency C-section was needed. She was born on a Sunday and weighed eight pounds, six ounces. Holding her for the first time, for Micah, it was like an oasis and what would prove to be a vast wilderness ahead of them because one month later, Eva got her first ear infection. The antibiotics cleared it up, but she got another one the next month. More antibiotics, a short reprieve, then another infection. This happened once a month for nine months. Micah and his wife, Aisha, Eva’s mom, were told that the ear tubes would be a game-changer for Eva. After that surgery, they did find some reprieve, but the infections returned.
A test revealed that Eva’s white blood cell count was exceptionally low. Her body had almost no defenses to fight off infections. So, more tests, more questions, more waiting in the wilderness. Finally, the dreaded answer came, Eva was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called ataxia telangiectasia, or AT for short. “What does that mean?” Micah and Aisha asked. It means that in addition to a weakened immune system, Eva’s other body systems would start to degrade, by age 10, she will likely need a wheelchair. She will have difficulty controlling her muscles, her eye movements, even swallowing will become a chore. AT they were told was presently incurable and unrelenting. There’s no way to stop it, or even to slow its progression. Life expectancy for those with AT is 20 to 30 years. A couple of years after Eva learned to walk, she started to wobble on her feet. Micah sometimes calls her his “AT walker.”
Eva just recently celebrated her eighth birthday. The last time I saw her, she was at our house with her family. She was playing with my wife’s old dolls, her My Little Pony dolls. The ones from the ’80s. Remember them, the pastel-colored ones with the long mains and tails and the little comb to brush and brush their hair. Between you and me, I’ve never understood why we’ve been hauling these ponies around from house to house over the years. It’s ridiculous, I thought, which is exactly how I felt about them in the 1980s when the commercial came in, interrupting our Saturday morning cartoons. My brother and I would cringe the moment we heard the jingle, you remember it: “My Little Pony, My Little Pony.” If you didn’t turn the channel quick enough, you’d never get that out of your head. “Each sold separately. Collect them all,” the advertiser would say at the end, and my wife did and still has them. When I saw them while I was unpacking our house from the last move, all I could see was a nuisance cramping my precious storage space.
My wife sees things differently. And seeing Eva play with them that day, those little horses that have held up remarkably well for 40 years, I’m starting to see that 40 years may not be too long to wait for some gifts. Eva wears glasses now. She has a special wheelchair to use when she needs it. Our church has been praying for her for over a year now since we first heard of her condition. We even had a special service of prayer and healing for her at the church. I didn’t know what AT stood for at the time. I’d heard her mom and dad explain it once or twice, but it just sounded like a mouthful of meaningless sounds, ataxia telangiectasia, not nearly as memorable as the pony jingle. No matter how many times I heard them say it just sort of went in one ear and out the other.
Last week I asked Micah what it was like when he first heard it and the bleak prognosis that went with it. “It was like stepping into a wasteland,” he said. Unreal, a shock, reckoning with what they were telling him that his daughter’s development wouldn’t look like other kids, that even as a toddler she’d start to decline, losing abilities rather than gaining them. “I just kept hoping that it was a bad dream,” he said. Micah didn’t listen to music for a whole year. Eventually, they connected with other families who had children with AT, and they tried to picture what life would look like moving forward. “Micah did a lot of journaling,” he said. He resolved to stop with the victim thinking, to stop asking, “Why me?” To be thankful that he gets to be Eva’s father, to treasure every moment with her, to not take things for granted.
Of course, that’s all easier said than done. Even if you don’t have an incurably sick child, it’s easy to feel like a victim. It’s easy to imagine that your lot in life is worse than others. It’s easy to wonder what you did to deserve this, in the wilderness, getting lost, forgetting who you are, forgetting where you’re going;—all that’s easy. And Micah would be the first to admit that.
The wilderness is a recurring image in the Bible, especially in the book of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. The wilderness is a place where resources are scarce and cures are lacking, dreams deferred, nightmares prolonged, prayers unanswered, and the best prognosis looks bleak. The wilderness is also the place where God chooses to meet His people, according to Isaiah. “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord,” Isaiah says in chapter 40. “In the desert, make a straight highway for our God.”
Then comes the famous lines quoted by Dr. King and his “I Have a Dream” speech. And quoted by Handel in his great choral work, The Messiah: “Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill made low. The uneven ground shall become level, the rough places a plane. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see it, because the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” On one level, Isaiah is referring to a literal wilderness, the desert wasteland between Jerusalem and Babylon, between modern-day Israel and Iraq. Isaiah is speaking to people in ancient Israel who around 600 years before the birth of Jesus were exiled, forcibly, deported, and relocated about 500 miles east across that very wilderness.
So when Isaiah says, “In the wilderness, prepare the way,” it would call to mind that bleak landscape that separated them from their home. It would also evoke the wilderness further back in their national history, the one to the south between Israel and Egypt. After their exodus from slavery, God led His people through that wilderness for 40 years, a journey that should have only taken a week. But apparently some things take 40 years of preparation, and God was patient, long-suffering, to refine His people to turn their hard hearts back to Him. And for 40 years they did not go hungry. Their feet did not swell. Their clothes did not wear out. God was their oasis in the wilderness, their safe haven. It was in that wilderness where God married Himself to His people at Mount Sinai. It was in that wilderness where God promised to make them a nation of priests, like a human highway through the desert to unite all people back to Him, their Creator.
The Old Testament is an account of the long-suffering patience of God. It starts in a flourishing garden, in fellowship with God. God creates humankind to be His adopted children. God intends to be a Father for them, to live with them, and share with them, and work with them, and care for them, as they learn to wisely care for the garden. But humans opted for their own wisdom. They thought God was cramping their style. They wanted their precious space. So they ventured out on their own without Him. God announced the consequences of their decision, cut off from their Source of life they will return to dust. Like a flower without water, they wither and die. That’s when our kind stepped into this spiritual wilderness, and all of us who’ve come since we’re born into it;—a condition the Bible calls this “present evil age,” see Galatians 1:4. And we’ve all participated in it, in its self-sufficient pseudo wisdom, and we’ve all perpetuated it and we all suffer because of it;—not just because of our sins, not just because of the sins of others, but sometimes we suffer simply because this is how things go when you’re stuck in a wasteland: when you’re just trying to survive, trying to live by the wisdom of this age, trying to lean on your own understanding, trying to manipulate your circumstances, forage and find some oasis, some pop-up tent of protection against the truth that we are all returning to dust.
And when someone comes along and names our condition, maybe you think that it’s just a meaningless bunch of sounds, that “It doesn’t apply to me. It’s not my problem, I’m doing just fine.” But God keeps speaking to us. Whether you’re in a safe haven or eight years into a wilderness that stretches out to the horizon, God is speaking. God sends a voice crying out in the wilderness: “Look, God is here. God hasn’t changed despite all you’ve done. God still loves you as His children. He’s calling you back to the garden.” And when people wouldn’t listen, when it just went in one ear and right out the other, God Himself came into the wilderness to retrieve us.
There are four official biographies of Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament, and each of them;—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John;—when they introduce us to Jesus, they all speak of the wilderness. They all quote that passage from Isaiah 40: “A voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.'” (See Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3, and John 1.) They all want us to see that Jesus is that Lord, the Creator in the flesh who meets us in the wilderness to lead us back to the garden. Jesus, God’s beloved Son tracked our steps to their bitter end in the wasteland. He scouted for us, found us, gathered us in His arms, and when He was crucified He died our death, Godforsaken on the cross. And He rose from the dead, so that by Baptism, by faith in Him, we also will rise one day with Him out of death and into the embodied life of the age to come: no more disease, no more strife, no more of our pseudo wisdom. Our time in the wilderness will end.
But if that’s our future, if Jesus has already risen from the dead, why is it taking so long? Loving patience is the answer we’re given in the Bible. In the book of 2 Peter 3:9, it says that what we count as slowness, God counts as priceless. The people, that is, all the people He wants to save. He doesn’t want anyone to be lost in that wilderness. And there are still many people out there at risk of being lost in the wilderness that leads to eternal separation from God. So Jesus sends us back into the wilderness of this age to be His all-terrain human highway on which He walks to meet people and lead them home in Jesus. Isaiah’s call continues through us today: in the wilderness, you prepare the way of the Lord.
My family and I got to know Micah and his family about five years ago when they first visited our church. Eva was only three at the time. I don’t remember much about her from that first visit, other than she stayed pretty close to her mom. I do remember their son, Jacob, though. He drew a little comic book picture of the people in the church. We all looked forward to getting to know Micah and his family. But then the pandemic came. About a year later when everyone else seemed to be coming out of the wilderness, Micah and his family were still missing. At the time, I didn’t know anything about their circumstances. I just assumed that their slowness to return to worship was because they weren’t making church a priority. I had no knowledge of what they were experiencing. I didn’t even know how to say ataxia telangiectasia, or that there was even such a thing, or what it does to children, or what it was doing to Eva.
I didn’t know that Micah was quietly blaming himself for all of this, still haunted by a distant relationship with his earthly father, wondering if God was punishing him, wondering if he needed to do something to create favor with God, wondering if God was waiting in the distance to see if they were worthy of love. I had no idea what they were going through. I just assumed they thought they were too busy. I just kept playing that old jingle in my head that church folks sometimes repeat: “People these days;—they just don’t care enough about church.” I didn’t know what they were going through. I couldn’t know, and I couldn’t know how God was still pursuing them, despite all this. I couldn’t know how much a short, unsensational prayer service for their daughter would mean to them, or how a simple invite to church on a potluck Sunday would become an on-ramp for them. Micah said that they started coming back to church because their son Jacob loved the potlucks, and he kept prodding them to go back to church to get more access to all those delicious desserts and hot dishes.
And then Micah finds himself in a Bible study with our church, listening, participating. And then earlier this year, he sends me an email. “It’s weird,” he said, “I look back on my life now and see that I haven’t been pursuing God. God has been pursuing me. That sounds cliche, but it seems to be the very distinction that I have been getting backwards, or upside down. I wasn’t really looking for God. In fact, I felt like I was done with churches and all that stuff that I couldn’t seem to relate to. But now, with you all and your neighborhood church right in my backyard, I felt a crack in my heart open up a bit and I can feel something. Is it a father pursuing me just like I’ve always wanted? I’m not sure, but I am finding myself drawn to something you all have got.”
I learned this bigger backstory about Micah and his family a few weeks ago. He shared a comic book that he’d been working on. Mike has been drawing comics since he was a kid. Now, he works as an instructional designer for a large company, and in his off hours, he continues to be an aspiring comic book artist. He’s working on a five-part book, full color, called AT Walker. AT stands for ataxia telangiectasia. It’s about his daughter, Eva. Her name’s not really Eva. He changed it to protect her privacy. I told him I’d do the same when he agreed to let me share his story. Micah says that he was inspired to create the comic by the hope of helping other families who are going through something similar. He was also inspired by his wife, Aisha, who in her off hours started handcrafting organic soaps and lotions to sell at local farmers’ markets. Her business is called Soap4Cure. That’s Soap, number 4, Cure. Aisha makes handmade bars of soap into works of art, and she donates all her profits to a charity called ATCP. The CP stands for “Children’s Project” and AT, well, you know what that is.
It’s part of the landscape for their family now. And on the way, they found a refuge, a shelter, safe havens, and an all-terrain transport, because Jesus is leading them. And I am inspired by the way they are using what He’s given them to prepare a way for others, whether by making soap into art or drawing a comic book to show that their daughter’s story doesn’t have to end in this wilderness. And yours doesn’t either, no one does. Because Jesus came to find us. Like a Shepherd He leads His flock; He gathers His lambs in His arms. He carries them close to His heart, and those with little ones, He gently leads (see Isaiah 40:11).
Would you pray with me? Dear Father, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Be a refuge for us in this wilderness and make us into a highway for others. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God now and forever. Amen.
No Reflections for December 10, 2023
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry” arr. Peter Prochnow for The Hymnal Project of the Michigan District, LC-MS. Used by permission.
“On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.