Advent Day 14 - New Creation - Isaiah 11:6-10

The end of the story will come as the beginning did... in Peace. 

Peace. 

Such a common word -- yet so often elusive.

Bookstore shelves brim with instructions for the seeking: "Look within yourself, look outside yourself, analyze your past, visualize the future, get help, find help, be help, self help...Try harder, do less, breathe deep, eat better, smile more." 

But for all our looking and analyzing and visualizing and meditation -- have we really attained more peace?

The God-child who became the God-man and died our Savior will return the Risen-King and restore the peace of the Garden...except this time there will be no snake to rustle through the grass and whisper lies. The world will be new and fresh and at peace once more, and the lion will lay next to the lamb and "the whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-alive, a LIVING knowledge of God -- ocean-deep, ocean-wide." 

The small glimpses of peace we get are but reflections of the Prince of Peace who came and will come yet again. Look for his fingerprints and small miracles in the everyday mundane. They are there if we will have the eyes to see them for what - and Who - they really are.

All is grace, 
Carie

Isaiah 11:6-10

The Message (MSG)

A Living Knowledge of God

6-9 The wolf will romp with the lamb,
    the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
    and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
    their calves and cubs grow up together,
    and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
    the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
    on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
    a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.

10 On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him. His headquarters will be glorious.