About 2700 years ago, a fellow stood up and delivered a message to his people. The message has been repeated thousands of time through our ages of time:
Comfort, O comfort ye,
my people, saith your God.
Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
and call out to her, that
her warfare has ended,
that her iniquity has been removed,
that she has received of the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
A voice is calling,
Clear the way for the Lord
in the wilderness;
make smooth in the desert
a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill made low;
and let the rough ground become a plain
and the rugged terrain a broad valley . . .
One notable repeat of Isaiah’s ancient deliverance message was accomplished when, in 1741, George Frederic Handel transformed Isaiah’s ancient message into a magnificent musical oratorio, entitled Messiah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)
Over my 70 years of life in this world, I have seen Handel’s Messiah performed four times. This musical/scriptural compilation is truly a magnificent expression of our Creator’s intents and purposes for us, his people who choose to have ourselves identified by the legacy of his gospel message, the salvatory news-story to a desperate world.
My favorite online performance of this musical masterpiece (although many consider it quite dated in its baroque style) was presented by Vaclav Luks and the Collegium 1704 in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtrIpTUbtc8
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