“A shoot will come out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots will bear fruit. Yahweh's Spirit will rest on him: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahweh.”
Isaiah does not say a shoot from the tree. He says a shoot from the stump.
Jesse was David's father. His family line was supposed to be a great tree, kings for generations. By the time Isaiah is writing, it is getting cut down to a stump in the ground. The kingdom is failing. The throne is unstable. Anyone walking past that family tree would say the same thing you would say about a stump in a yard. That is over. Something used to grow there.
And then, out of the dead-looking thing, a green shoot.
God seems to specialize in this. Not in propping up what is thriving, but in bringing life out of what everyone has written off. A barren couple. A slave in an Egyptian prison. A shepherd boy nobody bothered to call in from the field. A stump.
It matters that this promise came at the worst possible moment. Hope announced when everything is going well is cheap. Hope announced over a stump is a different thing entirely.
Most of us have a stump somewhere. A part of our life we have quietly stopped praying about because it seems finished. A relationship we have written off. A version of ourselves we assume is gone for good. We do not talk about it much. We just walk past it and think, that is over.
Advent asks us to look at that place one more time. Not with forced optimism, and not by pretending the tree was never cut. Just with the memory that God has a long history of starting something new at exactly the spot where the axe fell.
Talk About It Together
Be specific if you can. General answers are easier but they help less.
- What is a stump in your life, something you have quietly decided is finished?
- Have you ever seen God bring something back that looked dead? What happened?
- What would it cost you to hope about that thing again?
Tonight’s Challenge
Pray once, out loud, for the thing you stopped praying about. One sentence is enough.
Prayer
Father, we have places in our lives we have given up on. We stopped asking a long time ago because it hurt less than hoping. Thank You that You grow new life out of stumps. Give us the courage to bring You what looks finished, and do what only You can do with it. Amen.