Thanksgiving and beyond!

Hey all!
So I hope we have all had a great Thanksgiving! I know I sure did. 
We are now moving into a new liturgical year and the start of the season of Advent.  Advent is a seen of anticipation and convertion.  We are called, as we have read in this week's gospel, to repent from our sinful ways and to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord.  Many of the readings that we will hear at Mass throughout this season come from the book of Isaiah.  So, I think it would be beneficial to take a little Advent crash-course through the Book of the prophet Isaiah:
Isaiah is actually written by at least 2 authors (we don't know their actual names, so in the blessed name of tradition we will just call them Isaiah 1 and Isaiah 2).  Isaiah 1 writes to an Israelite people who are a school of fish out of water (BTW: Don't forget to feed our fish!).  The Israelites, just as they have throughout the entire history of their people, have fallen out of favor with God and it has landed them in servitude in Babylon.  Consequently, at this time in Israelite history, many of the old tradition are actually put to paper, so whenever someone asks who wrote the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, tell them some rabbi in Babylon.  The important thing to remember is that these people are looking for an identity.  What makes us Israelites so different, and God willing, so much more blessed than the barbaric and pagan Babylonians? These people eat pigs, for cryin' out loud! Well Isaiah 1 tells them all about the attrocious ways we had treated God before He allowed our people to be defeated by the Babylonians (this war took place about 80 years before Isaiah 1 wrote, so few people actually rememberred what had happened, and most of them had been born in Babylon, not their beloved Jerusalem).  Bottom line: the Israelites made some big mistakes that directly broke the covenant with God (reference: the entire Old Testament) and God was punishing them with exile in Babylon.
Enter Isaiah 2.  He writes an Advent poem (Comfort, O comfort ye people of Israel!) which tells them of the end of their suffering at the hands of God.  There time in exile is up, and God will soon be sending a Messiah to return them to Jerusalem. Shortly there after Babylon was destroyed and the Persian king, Cyrus, allowed the nation of Israel to return through the desert to their beloved Zion. 
What is important about the story of the Israelites' exile in Babylon? Do we ever feel like we have lost ourselves because of our failure to uphold our end of the bargain with God (i.e. those moments as we look in the mirror after a nice sequence of sins and do not recognize the person staring back at us)?  Is our preparation for the coming of our savior one of scrambling to make our homes presentable (hurry up and quit lying to your mom and dad), or is one of comfort and at long last a restoration of our identity?  Who is it that can bring us back across the desert and into our long forsaken homes?