I’ve only been to Arizona once but the day I arrived there was a big rain.  I went for a walk in the desert and it was beautiful.  Flowers and green and beautiful things.  That was my desert experience.  I was told that people long for the rain to come because the desert comes to life.  For me it was the only experience I know.

Chapter 34 is all about God’s judgment on the nations.   But chapter 35 is all about it’s beautiful restoration.  While Israel has been a desert, it will now receive rain and bloom abundantly.  The water will gush in the wilderness and will even grow grass, reed and papyrus.  It is a picture of the over-abundance with which Zion will be restored.

Weak will be strengthened.  The blind will see.  The lame will leap.

Heb 12:12 quotes from this chapter:  2 Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, 

Even in judgment there is a time for becoming strong again.

In many ways again this is Messianic.  There would  be a time when God brings joy and restoration and that time was Messiah.  Matthew quotes this verse:

Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me. (Matthew 11:4-6).

There would be a highway to holiness.

For us highways are a normal part of life.  It’s no big deal.  But in the first century world they were doing good to have more than dirt paths to connect from one place to another.  It was the Romans who connected the cities with roads and created the first “world wide web.”  But highways did exist, they were just rare and feats of extraordinary engineering.

But there one day be a highway of holiness.  The Messiah would pave that way and he did which we now understand.

It was all so joyful.  Then when Israel returned.  When Messiah came.  And when those who fully grasp their sins are washed away and walk in the place of freedom and joy.

Nothing quite like a desert blooming.  Whether that is an actual desert or the desert in our own souls when they come alive.