Hope!

Isaiah 11.1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.


He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.


The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.


Reflection

This passage from Isaiah reminds us of what we’re working towards during the Lent: the triumph of hope over despair, peace over chaos, and life over death.


In God’s new creation, all of the pain, the violence, the dysfunction we take for granted will become a thing of the past. Sounds improbable? Perhaps. But is it any less probable than God coming to be one of us and giving himself that we may know new life?


As Christians, we are realists, familiar with all that can go wrong, beginning with ourselves. But our realism is leavened with hope. For we know through our experience in Christ that all things are indeed possible: including a day when “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid … for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

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