The Great Unvoiced Cry of Life

My favorite Advent hymn, “There’s A Voice in the Wilderness Crying,” was not included in The “new” United Methodist Hymnal of 1989.  Written by James Lewis Milligan, the hymn is based on two passages of scripture:  Isaiah 40:3 and John 1:23.  Both of these passages are viewed as announcements of God somehow breaking into the world.  Every great king or leader in ancient times had a forerunner to announce his coming. Milligan puts the announcement made by both Isaiah and John the Baptist into song:

There’s a voice in the wilderness crying,

a call from the ways untrod:

Prepare in the desert a highway,

a highway for our God!

The valleys shall be exalted,

the lofty hills brought low;

make straight all the crooked places 

where the God, our God, may go!

There is an Unvoiced Cry of Life, too. It is a voice that announces but never speaks and yet pervades the world with more sound than any voice could ever do.  Unvoiced, the cry invites God and others, like you and me, to be where the cry is found.  This great unvoiced cry of life comes from the needs of people everywhere upon this earth, including our neighbors and friends.  The  need for sympathy and inspiration, for encouragement and hope, for enough to eat, for the support of someone who cares, for a shoulder to lean on, for the need to be loved, or for a hand to hold.  This unvoiced cry of life is present everywhere, all the time, and in everyone.  Theodore T. Munger wrote, “The unrest of this weary world is its unvoiced cry after God.”

Advent is a time of waiting, promise, expectancy, and hope.  Is it possible that Christ can be born anew in us this Christmas and give us new ears by which we could hear and respond to the Great Unvoiced Cry of Life?

We can build bridges...