“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.”
-Isaiah 11:2

The story of Guadalupe features an Indian man 10 years after the Spanish conquest of southern Mexico, who encounters the Virgin. She sends him to the Spanish bishop to ask for a church to be built where she stands. As an Indian, he hardly has the social capital to talk to the bishop like that, and the bishop initially resists, but in the end, a miracle is wrought and the church is built. Over 500 years later the stone building still attracts thousands of pilgrims daily. It is not large or impressively decorated. It seems to gather up in its stones the memories of an encounter that stands society on its head.

The above passage refers to God’s chosen messenger who will establish just rule in Israel once more. In our day, perhaps we can see that messenger as the Indian man who obeyed the command of the Lady and forever colored the Hispanic experience of the faith. Battling against unjust social structures in the church, he nevertheless delivers the message and the church is built. The story still inspires people of indigenous and mixed-blood in Latin America. “If God talks to us through the divine mother and brings justice, we have hope.”

It remains to the powerful to surrender to the work of God and follow along. I am a white, male, American citizen. I am powerful. Like the bishop’s initial reaction, I can pull what I have to my bosom, fending off any who would chip away at it, or I can bend the power I have to serve what God is doing among powerless people. The story of Guadalupe places hope before the powerless and a challenge before the powerful.

Be present with your people, O God of liberation, and give us the strength to follow Juan Diego’s vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe to bend earthly power to the service of your Kingdom, through him who liberates us, your Son, our Lord who with you and the Holy Spirit, live and reign in glory everlasting. Amen.
-The Rev. Paul Moore

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
-Isaiah 11:1

It is perilous to be a young tree on Big Lake. The beaver makes regular rounds.

Years ago, I planted a Gravenstein apple tree. The beaver chewed it to a stump. New shoots grew. I put wire around the tree to protect it from the beaver’s teeth. The tree grew back, producing huge, juicy apples. Last winter the beaver climbed up the wire and pruned it again to a bare stump. This spring the injured stump sprouted a leaf. By the end of summer, it had several healthy new branches surrounded by a wide wire cage.

Out of an injured stump, new life springs.

Over and over again, the people of God were crushed. And new life sprang up.

Over and over again our lives, our hopes, our dreams get crushed to lifeless stumps.

I wonder: What happens in an injured tree root before new life springs forth?

What healing happens in us that allows new life to spring forth in us? What happens between grieving loss and the healing that allows new life to surprise us? What goes on in the between time?

What has been crushed in you that you are grieving? What helps you to heal? When have you been surprised by new life? Where is God in your grieving, healing and resting, waiting and watching? Advent asks us to be quiet, to rest, to watch, to wait. We do that in the promise that we are never alone; never without hope.

Gracious One, in whom we live and move and have our being, You see crushed stumps with love and hope. Hold us in our grieving, our resting, our healing. May we wait and watch with the assurance of your presence and in the hope of new life springing forth in the most surprising ways. Help us to become even more a healing, restoring, life-giving community to a world that needs your love. Amen.
-The Rev. Vicki Wesen

“He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
-Isaiah 2:4

When I was in the hospital with pneumonia in February 2019, my laptop died(!) and I was bored out of my mind. I started channel-surfing on the TV in my room and found a TV show where they were throwing homemade knives against a wall to see if they survived. It was a TV show on the History Channel called “Forged in Fire” and contestants competed to make knives and swords for a $10,000 prize. It was fascinating to me because of the need to understand the composition of the steel they were using, the culture and history behind the knives and swords contestants were told to make, and the way they were fashioning the blade was interesting to watch. (Seeing men working in utili-kilts was also pretty fun.)

This particular verse from Isaiah 2 caught my eye when I was looking at verses to use for this devotional book because I could now understand all the work involved in “beating swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” This was before the time of the gas-powered forges that many metalsmiths now enjoy, so smiths would have to heat their metal in coal-powered forges and hammer it out on anvils. The process of beating spears into pruning hooks would involve heating the metal and shaping it into a hook by beating it around the horn of an anvil with a hammer. Beating the swords into plowshares would involve broadening the tip and sharpening it.

The thing that makes this image so amazing is the idea of repurposing an instrument of war into something useful for peacetime. Israel was usually at war with somebody, and it would be ludicrous to repurpose a sword or spear this way. However, things are changing. The Messiah is coming, and the ways of the world are being turned upside down. Things meant for war are now only going to be used for peaceful purposes. Change is coming.

Mold our hearts, Lord, and change them as a metalsmith changes the swords and spears into something more useful for Your world. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.”
-Isaiah 61:11

As an aspiring gardener, this verse really speaks to me. In the darkest times of winter, the catalogs arrive, and I spend hours pouring over the beautiful illustrations and descriptions and thinking about and planning for spring planting season. As the weather warms, the earth brings forth all kinds of shoots, some desirable and some not so much. (Bindweed and buttercup, really?!) I wait eagerly for the carefully planted seeds and tubers to spring up and rejoice as they grow and produce. Then comes the challenge of weeding, feeding, and watering to make sure the plants can produce. The earth and the garden may cause the springing forth, but the gardener’s skill, knowledge, and hard work are necessary to ensure the harvest.

I look at God, as the creator of the Garden of Eden, as a true Master Gardener! How God must rejoice when righteousness and praise spring up before all the nations. As a part of His creation, I believe our responsibility is to foster the development of righteousness and praise through our thoughts, conversations, and actions. As St. Teresa of Ávila so beautifully writes: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Gracious God, we thank you for giving wonderful examples to help us follow you. Help us to live and grow in your love. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen.
-Cathey Frederick

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
– Isaiah 61:10

I may be an old crotchety dude, but I still remember the births of my children. I still remember the absolute delight of holding each of those bundles of joy for the first time. They may have cried immediately upon delivery as they saw bright lights for the first time and felt the shock of a room that was well under the 98.6° they had experienced consistently for nine months. But once they were scrubbed down, weighed, and evaluated (a.k.a. fingers and toes counted), they were wrapped in warm soft blankets and handed over to Mom or Dad to be embraced for the first time ex-utero, and they relaxed and rested comfortably in arms that enveloped them in love and care.

One of the most amazing and amusing things I noted about my children when they were young, is when they were delighted (or not) by something, they showed their delight with their whole bodies. They didn’t just smile or scowl with their lips. Their whole bodies got involved in manifesting their ‘tude.

“My whole being shall exult in my God …” says Isaiah. As a Scandinavian, I tend to be pretty stoic about most things. As I’ve gotten older, my Viking blood has dripped away, and I’ve begun to feel those weird things … I think they’re called “emotions.” Blech! Nonetheless, Isaiah reminds me I need to learn to let go and allow my whole body to embrace God every bit as unabashedly as a child embraces life – indeed, allows life to embrace them. I might give it a shot this year.

I was taken out of a warm, damp, and dark space in which I had every comfort. You brought me out into the light; you washed me clean; you gave me to others to love and from whom to be loved. I doubt I’ll ever understand completely, but I hope you’ll help me revel in your love and learn to play with your beads. Amen.
-The Rev. Keith Axberg

“They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”
-Isaiah 61:4

I wish you could have seen Beirut and Aleppo when we did. Carol and I were in our early twenties when work and wanderlust took us to the Middle East. We lived in Iran for several years, and our travels throughout the Islamic world between Turkey and Afghanistan took us as well to Lebanon and Syria.

Our time in Beirut, back when it was still referred to as “the Paris of the Middle East,” was memorable. We had hardly been there a few weeks, visiting friends who lived just south of Lebanon’s capital, when the sectarian tensions we had sensed almost on first arriving spilled over into violence. I doubt we’ll ever forget the anxious taxi ride that took us safely out of Beirut as the fighting raged. Beirut had rebuilt to a point perhaps rivaling its more carefree days before the plight of Palestinian refugees brought the Arab/Israeli war to its palm-lined streets and Mediterranean shore, only to be devastated by a pandemic and a chemical fertilizer explosion with the power of a small nuclear device.

Our favorite city in the Middle East (next to our hometown of Isfahan, Iran) was Aleppo. Its architecture spanned a millennium, from Alexander the Great to the Ottoman Empire. Its souk (or, as we would say in Farsi, “bazaar”) was a feast for the senses, including taste — thanks to a profusion of bakeries, kebab and falafel vendors, and coffee houses. But what we remember above all else was the friendliness and urbanity of a society that prided itself on hospitality and friendship. Pictures of Aleppo today do more than break my heart — they make me fearful of what our underlying prejudices can do when distorted, amplified, and bent to the will of an authoritarian ruler.

While I despair that I will ever see Beirut and Aleppo restored, if not to their former glory, then at least to places of safety and civility where hospitality once again reigns, I do believe it will happen…because it has happened before. This is ultimately something I leave in God’s hands, but with the awareness that if we are going to be recipients of and participants in the healing and restoration of the world, then we need to give God some help.

Lord, remind us of our gospel obligation to shelter the refugee, and our country’s obligation to be an advocate of peace, justice, and mercy throughout the world. Guide us toward opportunities to live into the gospel through our generosity and shared humanity. Amen.
-Michael Boss