“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of these roots” (Isaiah 11:1).
Have you ever felt completely at a dead end? Stuck in a relationship, a conflict or a major that just sucked all the joy out of your soul? Hopelessness is one of the worst feelings in the world. God’s people felt that, too. The successors of King David had failed to lead the people. Destruction was abundant. War had become a way of life. Few knew the story of Yahweh and even fewer actually followed by the laws of Moses. Justice and peace were a distant, faded memory.
When we utterly lose hope – either from the current political climate or our struggling grade in Organic Chemistry – it is vital to draw strength from those who have walked the road before us. God never gave up on God’s people, even when they forgot Yahweh! Isaiah reminds us sometimes we need to go back to the very beginning (the tree-stump!) to remember our source of strength and meaning.
This message is excerpted from “Awaiting Immanuel: Four weeks of Advent devotions” by Rebecca Boardman in the December 2019 Café online magazine. Today we commemorate Francis Xavier, missionary to Asia, 1552.
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