Today’s author is Prince of Peace’s Intentional Interim Pastor, Steve Sylvester.
“The boots of all those invading troops,
along with their shirts soaked with innocent blood,
Will be piled in a heap and burned,
a fire that will burn for days!
Isaiah 9:5 (The Message)
As is often the case, God sees things differently than we do. Most people, myself included if I’m honest, want to see a ruthless conquering army punished. I think of the Russian army that, unprovoked, attacked Ukraine in the winter of 2022, and has been pressing forward since then. If, God willing, the war comes to an end with Ukraine intact and sovereign, it would be appropriate that the aggressors be punished. God’s idea, however, would be to remove from soldiers their boots that trampled innocent victims, strip them of their uniforms soaked in the blood of those they have killed, pile it all up and up, higher and higher, and then set the whole hateful mess on fire to serve as fuel that would heat their victims’ homes.
This makes me think of the end of the story of Jesus’ feeding of the fifteen or twenty thousand (we remember it as the feeding of the “five thousand,” but in the story we are told that total didn’t account for the number of women and children who listened to Jesus and were then fed). After everyone at their fill, Jesus sent the disciples to, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”
In God’s economy, the pain and leavings of war becomes fuel that warms us when we are victims of unjust violence. In God’s economy, crumbs are gathered up instead of being discarded in order to feed us when we are hungry again. Nothing is wasted. Everything is used for good, even that which was evil or was discarded as insignificant.
When I am invited to hope, I instinctively leap in my mind to a time when my present difficulties are gone or the things I wish I had were present. That’s not the hope God speaks of through Isaish or shows us in Jesus. God’s hope is about reclaiming for everything the original goodness God intended. God’s hope is that bloodshed becomes fuel that warms us and crumbs become a feast. God’s hope is about the redemption of all of creation, every dark corner. God’s hope is not just bigger than our hope, but fundamentally different. It’s all embracing and complete and it leaves nothing out. Nothing.