It was the year 1850 in the ancient city of Edinburgh. In those days, many people came to Scotland's capital seeking work as new industries roared and wealth streamed from the countryside into the metropolis. Among this band of workers looking for new opportunities was a gardener named John Gray, together with his wife Jess and their son.
But the city had little need for gardeners, and John eventually secured a job with the Edinburgh police force as a night watchman to keep him company. Through the long nights, John took a workmate, a sky terrier called Bobby. Together. John and Bobby became a familiar sight, trudging through the old cobbled streets of Edinburgh, keeping watch over the sleeping city through thick and thin winter and summer.
They walked and watched, faithful friends. Well, the years on the streets took their toll on John and he contracted tuberculosis. On the 15th of February 19, 1858, he died. He was buried in Old Gray Fris, churchyard and Bobby the sky terrier led his master's funeral procession through the town. Later that day when all the mourners had left the cemetery, Bobby stayed at John's graveside.
The caretaker shooed him away, but the little dog returned and refused to leave. The hours turned to days, the days to weeks, weeks to months, and still Bobby refused to leave John's grave, whatever the weather, however, wet the rain and cold the snow. John's family tried to take Bobby home, but he always returned to John's grave.
Soon Bobby became a fixture of Edinburgh life. At one o'clock each day, a cannon sounded from Edinburgh Castle and Bobby would leave his master's grave and run to the cafe where he and John had eaten every day for those years. They worked together. Bobby would eat lunch and then trot back to John's grave.
The news of Bobby's loyalty spread and he became a boon for Edinburgh tourism. People came from all over the UK to see him keeping watch in the cemetery, waiting faithfully for his master to return just before one o'clock. As the cannon was preparing to fire, crowds would gather along the route from the cemetery to the cafe to wave and cheer for Bobby as he made his way to lunch.
For 14 years, Bobby lay on John's grave only ever leaving for his one o'clock meal. When Bobby died at the grand old age of 16, they buried him just 75 yards from his master's grave. In 1981, the city installed a red granite headstone, which was unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester, a minor member of the British Royal family.
The inscription reads: Bobby died 14th of January, 1872. Age 16 years. Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all. Can I get an ah oh?
It's Advent and we're waiting. We wait with the hope, the patience, and the watchfulness of Bobby, but no sermon illustration is without its problems. And the obvious issue with the story of Bobby, is that the little dog waited in vain. His master truly was dead and wasn't coming back. But the man we wait for has no grave.
Our story ends not with frustration, but with joy. Not with despair, but with completion. Not with doom, but with glory. It's advent and we're waiting with the faithfulness of Bobby, but with the promise of Isaiah--yes, him. Again, if you've been here on either of the last two Sundays, or if you have taken part in the livestream, you'll know that keeping us company in these four weeks in Advent is an Old Testament prophet of Hope.
Two weeks ago, Isaiah promised that when God's kingdom comes, weapons will be transformed into farming tools, swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Last week, he promised that not just humans will be transformed, but all of creation will be reborn so that the wolf will lie with the lamb.
And the lion eats straw like the ox. And today he goes even further. There'll be healing for humans and even for plants. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the la shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
The burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water. The haunt of jackals shall become a swamp. The grass shall become reeds and rushes.
Sometimes the prophecies in the Bible are poems full of imagery. That is not meant as literal, but I think that this morning's prophecy from Isaiah is actually partly to be taken literally when Christ comes, when the kingdom is complete, when our home is with God, the eyes of the blind shall be opened.
The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speech. Speechless shall sing for joy. We will be raised to live eternally with new minds and new bodies free from illness. Pain and disability. Oh, this makes me feel like Bobby. I want that day. I need it.
I'm impatient for it That day when we are no longer under the curse of being fallen and broken human beings. There's not one of us who does not need restoration. Each of us lives with brokenness in every part of our bodies, minds and spirits. We are tainted with death, marred by sin, our own, and that of other people.
Some of us live with chemical imbalances in our brains that mean we are chronically depressed or anxious or live with some other kind of pain that was never part of God's design for humanity and won't be a feature of his coming kingdom. Some of us have experienced events that have shaped our lives and still cause us distress.
All of us have experienced rejection, failure, disappointment, and all of us have been shaped by those experiences in ways that bring suffering to ourselves and sometimes to other people. We are all fellow sufferers in a broken creation subject to fallen minds and captive to broken bodies is. But here, the Advent Bird.
Christ is coming. We shall be raised from death. We shall be free of suffering of every kind.
Physical and mental transformation isn't the only promise. Isaiah serves up in chapter 35. Did you notice the part about water in the desert? Now he's getting poetic. Now he's drawing us away from the literal into the world of glorious symbols. Waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
The burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water.
Right now at this very moment, something amazing is happening in the Atacama Desert in Chile. It is one of the driest places on earth. It is lifeless for years on end. The At has an average of just 0.08 inches of rain per year, but not this year. This summer it rained in Atma a lot In July and August, some parts received 2.3 inches of rain, and today there is a mighty and miraculous fuchsia colored carpet covering the desert.
This has only happened 15 times in the last 40 years. I don't know how long those flowers will last before the desert returns to its default mode of dryness and death. But I do know one thing. This ocean of flowers wasn't planted by a gardener or designed by a landscaper, even when it wasn't raining, when it all looked like death, when it seemed nothing could ever be born or thrive.
There were seeds. They'd been there for years, they could not be seen. And even if they could, there was no one there to see them. But there they laid, buried, hidden and lifeless, waiting for the summer. It rained.
I went into the desert once. Not in Texas or Southern California. In the United States, deserts are never too far away from a highway or a hamlet. Now, I journeyed into the Sahara. It was the quietest place on earth, but the noise was deafening. When I got off the bus, I was engulfed by the size of the desert, overwhelmed by my feelings of smallness, insignificance, and vulnerability.
There were no people apart from my fellow travelers and no animals. A few hours earlier, we had passed a single full on donkey underneath a solitary tree. But where we were now, no creature could live and no plant could survive. We were alone and overcome, and then the voices started. Not the voices of my fellow travelers.
We all stood in silence, staring at the nothingness. No, the accuser showed up just like he did for Jesus when he was in the desert. The self-doubts, the fears, the lies, the accusations, the crazy self-destructive thoughts. The heat may play tricks on your eyes, but there's nothing like being in the desert to deceive your ears.
Ewan McGregor knows. In the 2015 film, last days in the desert, the Scottish actor played both Jesus and Satan engaged in a prolonged conversation in the wilderness, he says, of his time shooting the film in a Californian desert. You think a lot of things you don't normally have time to think about.
You think of things you thought were buried and away and dealt with, and they bubbled back up and you realize they weren't dealt with. Things from your childhood, your relationships.
The wildest places are often inside our heads. It's there that the world's bloodiest and fiercest battles are waged. Before tyrants crush their people, they do so in their minds. Before Holocausts are unleashed, they are hatched in imaginations. Before every little sin takes root in a life, it has entered a brain and received a welcome.
People don't crash and burn. They slide one compromise at a time, and the compromises begin with a thought in your brain. In the desert, no one can hear you scream. In the desert, there's no one to tell you you are loved. In the desert, the voice of the accuser deafens, but it won't be like this forever.
Waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water. The seeds that lie dormant in you will sprout. Your wholeness will come. Do you long for this like Bobby? You know better than I do what your desert is.
Hear the word of the Lord. Wherever your desert is, whatever form it takes, whether it pains your body or assaults your mind, the day of living water is coming. Amen. Amen.