A beautiful hope and a great power
| The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. 7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. 9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah11:6-9) |
- Vivid imagery featuring polar opposites (wolf & lamb) (child & cobra)
- Parallel structures: Two strophes with three lines about animals and one (or two) about a child
- The two lines about children and snakes are a parallelism
- It ends with strong inclusive imagery (mountain, earth and sea)
This vivid, imagination-igniting imagery was carefully and poetically crafted as a powerful expression of the hope that Isaiah has in the coming Messiah.
But you may ask:
"Isn't it all pie-in-the-sky?"
"What possible comfort can these verses offer when these images describe a reality that is just too good to be true?"
"Isn't Isaiah creating false hope? There is no point in Israel's history where any of this happened."
Three points need to be made about this:
Firstly, this poetic language that is being used to describe our ultimate destiny. It's talking about heaven and the peace and harmony that we will experience in the presence of the Lord. The poetry points to peace, harmony and healing. This is a strong hope.
Secondly, while this is poetry, it hints at the significant power of the Messiah to bring about restoration. He is more than able to heal and restore and renew. Can He heal my broken soul? Can He restore my broken relationships? Can He bring justice to a broken world? Well... He can bring the wolf and the lamb together, He can make the lion a vegetarian and He can make the world safe for a child. While we don't see it in its full reality yet, but we have experienced this incredible power when we were forgiven and when we forgive others...
Which brings us to the third point... While the full reality is yet to come, it is not just pie-in-the-sky. Every time we ask for God's forgiveness, every time a relationship is restored and every time a memory is healed, we are experiencing a taste of the hope and power we referred to in points one and two. Think about the peace that flooded your heart when you knew your sins were forgiven - was that not the leopard lying down with the goat? Think about the relief of a relationship restored - was that not the cow feeding with the bear?
When Jesus died on the cross, His sacrifice was powerful enough to heal the world. While the full healing is still coming, the magnitude of its goodness inspires us and gives us hope, and in the meantime we draw on the power of the Messiah to bring hope and healing to our corners of the world.
And so we regularly pray:
"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven."
(Tomorrow we'll take a look at a BEAUTIFUL example of heaven on earth from the life of Hezekiah)
