Is 11:1-10 Ps 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17 Lk 10:21-24

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer The Daily Reflections Praying Advent

“There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea.” – Isaiah 11:9

The idea of a baby playing by a cobra’s den is slightly startling to me.  It seems to contradict the very nature of things, along with lions eating with calves and wolves staying with lambs.  These vivid examples from Isaiah are meant to help us understand that a change in the entire world order is coming in the person of Jesus.  He will be a baby born into a family of modest means whom kings will pay homage to; a good man who will dine with sinners and keep the company of those forsaken by society.  His way will change the world. 

God became man out of God’s mysterious, unending love for humanity. 

“You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” – Saint Augustine

Even with Christ setting us free from the ways of the world and re-gifting the knowledge of the Lord to us, we are prone to “regard equality with God as something to be grasped” (Philippians 2:6).  It is exceedingly difficult for us, the restless ones, to really grasp that God’s ways are simply not our ways.  Unassuming, self-giving love is tantalizingly inconceivable to us.  We are not God.  Yet, as Michael Himes unfolds beautifully in his book, Doing the Truth and Love, not being God and being a creature of God is who we are.  Being a creature of God, a human being, is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that God becomes incarnate in order to help us understand God’s ways.  Jesus Christ was the living example of the lamb inviting in the wolves.  By living life as a man, Christ endeavored to help us understand the true world order, revealed as peace by the words of the prophet Isaiah.  Ever since the “happy fault” of Adam (the essence of our very humanity), we have continually fallen and fought to change the world order. 

The way of Christ brings us back home.  He embraces us, restless desperation and all, and begs us to see that who we are is, in fact, beautiful.

May this Advent be a time of peace for all of us, and may we come to see all people as beautiful and worthy of loving, just as God would have us do.