New Life

“A shoot shall come up from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.”   

                                                                                                                - (Isaiah 11:1-2)

On our first day of hiking in the Scottish Highlands, Carol and I took a wrong turn. We weren't exactly lost, but our hike would become about four miles longer than we thought when we had started the day.

Much like our own state of South Carolina, logging is a major industry in Scotland. We were walking along an old logging road, and the evidence of logging activity was all around us – stumps and newly-planted seedlings on either side of the road. With about a mile left to our destination, I looked over to the right, and I saw a stump covered with moss—the tree had obviously been cut years before. But coming up out of the middle of the stump was a little sapling of new growth, about 18 inches tall.

Out of a dead and lifeless stump, new life was beginning to flourish.

I immediately thought of the promise of God to the prophet Isaiah, concerning the coming of the Messiah: “A shoot shall come up from the stump of Jesse, a branch shall grow out of his roots.” It is a promise of new life on two levels. First, to the Israelites who first heard these words, it was the assurance that attacks by their enemies and threats to the kingdom would not be the last word; indeed, God had a plan for God's people, a plan to provide blessing and new life. Second, it was a foretelling of the salvation that God would usher in with the Messiah, through the line of David as God had promised long beforehand.

God is about new life. God is about resurrecting what is dead and making it new, alive. I take comfort in knowing that death is not, finally, what awaits us. (Don't get me wrong, death will come our way, but it is not the final reality we will face) When I am tired and weary, like I was on that hike in the Highlands, the shoot sprouting forth from the stump is something that strengthens me and encourages me. When I survey the political landscape in our world, and all the hatred going back and forth, I cling to the image of the shoot coming from the stump of Jesse; I know that death, and evil, and brokenness will not—cannot—hold God back.

Every once in a while I look again at that picture from our hike. On the surface, there's nothing really beautiful about it. But the message it proclaims, and the word that it shares, are powerful. 

I've actually seen a few more stumps with new life coming out of them, photographing them along the way.

I think God's trying to remind me of something.