Dear Friends,
In worship yesterday, we heard Isaiah’s expansive vision of the Peaceable Kingdom in which “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). Following the service, as I was shaking hands in the receiving line, an SCC member delivered a hand-written note with a quote from Woody Allen. It read, “the lion and the lamb may lie down together, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” Allen’s quote reminded me of a line from Taylor Swift’s song, Wonderland, in which she tells the story of a toxic relationship. “I felt your arms twistin’ around me. I should have slept with one eye open at night.”
Scripture is not simply a mirror of the world as we know it. It is, instead, a vision of the world as God intends it. By reading the Bible and having our hearts and minds transformed, we prepare ourselves to practice our faith in more substantive ways. Given the current state of our world, we know that we will never fully achieve the peace that Isaiah prophesied. But we can make steps in our daily walk with Christ to more fully embody the Kingdom of Heaven. And we can always hope, at that grand reunion with God, to see for ourselves the Kingdom depicted on the canvas of Susan Jenkins (see below).
May God bless you this Advent as you seek to practice your faith with conviction and boldness,
Jon
