If you have ever bought a lot on a hillside, you will remember the first time the excavator arrived. The operator walks the land, squints up the slope and says something like, “We’ll take a bit off the top and bring it down here.” For days the machine cuts into the high side and pushes soil into the hollow, packing it down layer by layer. At the end, where there was a slope, there is a level pad. Only then can the foundation go in.
It is noisy, dusty, expensive work, and it is also a picture that goes back thousands of years.
A road through the wilderness
Isaiah 40 opens with the word “Comfort.” It is spoken to a people who have lost almost everything: their land, their city, their temple, many of their homes. They are in exile, and the road home looks impossible. Then a voice calls out to prepare a highway for God in the desert:
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” (Isaiah 40:4-5, KJV)
In the ancient world, when a king was coming, workers went ahead to grade the road: filling holes, cutting through ridges, straightening bends. Isaiah says God Himself is coming to bring His people home, and the ground will be levelled before Him.
This passage has carried generations of people who were pushed into the valleys. It was sung in churches and spoken from pulpits during the long struggle for civil rights, as preachers dreamed aloud of a day when the high places of privilege and the low places of injustice would meet on level ground. It has spoken, too, to Caribbean families whose ancestors were enslaved, then freed with no land, and who have spent generations climbing out of the hollow towards a home of their own.
The uneven ground of our homes
Most of us can name the valleys and hills in our own lives. For some families the valley is financial: a deposit that never quite comes together, a rent that eats half the wages, a mortgage in arrears. For others it is a hill of opposition, perhaps a family land dispute, a title that has been “in process” for years, or a landlord who will not repair anything. Some ground is simply crooked: a plan that bends round every obstacle and never seems to reach the destination.
Picture a young mother renting a single room with her two children. She has worked steadily for years, saved what she can and been turned down twice for a mortgage. From where she stands, the road to a home of her own runs uphill forever. Isaiah does not tell her the road is easy. He tells her Someone is coming who levels roads.
Hope that does not skip the work
Levelling a site is slow. So is most of what God does in our homes and circumstances. The same chapter that promises level ground also admits that people grow weary: “Even the youths shall faint and be weary” (Isaiah 40:30, NKJV). But it goes on to promise renewed strength to those who wait on the Lord.
Waiting, in the Bible, is rarely passive. The exiles still had to walk the road home once it was prepared. The young mother still has to keep saving and keep asking. A family in a land dispute still has to sit down with the surveyor and the attorney. Hope does not replace the work; it makes the work bearable, and gives it a direction.
And there is a word here for those of us who stand on the high ground. If God lowers hills and lifts valleys, then those of us with more (a paid-off house, family land, a spare room, influence at work) are invited to join Him. That might mean charging a fair rent rather than whatever the market will bear, helping a relative with a deposit, or using what we know to guide someone through a confusing application. Sometimes we are the earth that is moved so that someone else can build.
All flesh together
The last line of the promise is easy to miss: “all flesh shall see it together.” The levelled road is not a private driveway. God’s glory is revealed when people who were separated by hills and valleys finally stand on the same ground. That is a hope worth praying for on every street, in every scheme and in every family yard.
For reflection
- Where is the uneven ground in your household right now: a valley to be lifted, a hill to be lowered, or a crooked path?
- Is there someone on lower ground you could help, with your time, knowledge or resources, this month?
A prayer
Lord, You see the valleys where families are stuck and the hills that stand in the way of a safe home. Lift up those who are low, humble those of us who stand high, and straighten what has been crooked for too long. Give us patience for the slow work, and make us willing to be part of the levelling. Let Your glory be seen, and let us see it together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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