Unfurling Hope

Unfurling Hope

‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him –
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –‘

Isaiah 11:1-2

 

If you run your finger across the a sawn-off tree stump, tracing the circular path of its rings, it will tell you a story. Each line has a tale to tell, a story-line revealing years of droughts, the story of rains, the story of bushfires, the story of years of abundance and years of lack. It will tell you how old it is, how long it has stood in place, and what each year was like. A stump is old and full of years, full of story. A long old story traced in rings.

Israel had a long old story too, rings you could run your finger along, sapling years of the patriarchs, drought years of wilderness wandering, the bushfire years of the judges, and the mixed years of prophets and Kings, years when their tree stretched tall and glorious and years of drought when in turned within. 

And then this moment, this sad moment when the axing exile cut Israel off from their story line altogether, cut down to this anguished stump existence, sitting in deadening, dormant silence, waiting for help, waiting for a sign of life, waiting for God to save them, as He always had- through the desert years, when He sent Moses, through the charring years, when He sent the Judges. Theirs had always been a story of falling and catching, a nation failing, a God redeeming. Dark fire lines followed always by ringing lines of grace.

But this stump now sat silent. Waiting. Holding onto a promise spoken back when God was speaking.

‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him –
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –’

Isaiah 11:1-2

They had the promise of life, but not life itself. The promised Messiah, the soon to be story -line of a baby born king, a child born of a virgin, a branch shooting from Jesse’s stump, a ruler rising from Bethlehem. 

The Christmas story has never been the beginning of the story. Jesus didn’t just arrive into a stable, a manger, the arms of a young woman from Nazareth and a carpenter from the house of David, He came into a story that was already being told. About Him. There was a bigger storyline traced in rings. An older story with ancient roots. A story stretching from the beginning of time and reaching through to the end of it. The story of God’s long walk with human beings. With Israel. 

The Christmas story cannot be understood outside of the context of the pulsing story of Jewish history. And Jewish history cannot be understood outside the life and mission of Jesus, this baby born King. Jesus came into the incredibly messy human story of Israel, bushfire burnt, with charred rings full of brokenness, falling and failing. A story that had became lost in the dark, cutting itself, chopping itself down to this aching stump.

 ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit….’

They had the promise of life, if not life itself. The promise that it wasn’t the end. 

But it felt like the end. 

Close friends of ours lost their daughter in a car accident when she was just nineteen. After her death they discovered a book of beautiful poetry she had written and so they subsequently published it in her memory. One of the lines she wrote was…

‘How can the end be the beginning again when all seems lost.’*

If you run your finger over the lines of your life, what story does it tell? As you trace the rings one by one, the years of plenty, the years of drought, the bushfires that felt like your world was ending. It’s hard to believe, after the cutting and the breaking, that life could still spring forth. That the end can somehow be the beginning again. When all we felt was loss. 

The thing is though, though it felt hard and painful and long. It was never the end. It felt deadening for a while, like hope seeping out through the cracks in all our hopes. But this God, He doesn’t deal in dead ends. This Author of life is a specialist in renewed creation, new creation life. In Him there is no end. Not even in death.  There is only a shoot, only unfurling hope. Sometimes so small a shoot is hard to see at first. But in Him there is always life after death. Life after pain. Life after loss. Life that looks like new beginnings made stronger (in the long run) by all the aching pain of the past. By a God who weaves all things together for good (Romans 8:28).

Bushfire lines ringing the story of darkness just might be the most beautifully lines in the end, after the fires have passed.

Look for the shoot. You’ll find it there. 

Unfurling hope. 

 

 

* Sophie Large, ‘Sophie’s Log’