A Seed of Hope

It's been one of those seasons.  A season of waiting when everything feels like it's just coming at me from all sides.  It seems like no matter what I do, I just can't get over that hump.  It's as if every little ounce of hope seems to just burn away amidst it all.

That's what it was like during the time of Isaiah as well.  In Isaiah 6, the Lord tells Isaiah to warn and prophesy over the people of Israel and Judah.  Although things were going well for them at the moment, the Lord wanted them to know that things were going to change.  See how the Lord describes it to Isaiah:

"Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" 

And he said:

"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is a desolate waste,

and the LORD removes people far away, 

and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land."

Waste.  Without inhabitant.  

Empty.  Desolate.  Forsaken.  

Have you been in a place like that before?  Maybe you are in that place now. It just seems like you are so far down in this dark, bleak, desolate, forsaken place.  You've tried everything you can, and you're just trying to crawl your way out. 

Maybe this is even how we can see the state of our nation and the state of the world.  Christians are being persecuted all over now for the sake of 'tolerance.' Babies are being murdered and sold for research and no one seems to truly care.  Women and children are being sold into slavery, raped and abused for others 'pleasure.'  Refugees from Syria are fleeing for safety and freedom.  

It kind of seems like our world and life is so similar to this time of Isaiah - full of sin leading to waste and forsakenness. 

Take heart brothers and sisters.  God never leaves us without a witness, and He certainly doesn't leave us without hope!  Look at what the Lord says just a verse later:

"And though a tenth remain in it, 

it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak,

whose stump remains when it is felled.  

The holy seed is its stump."

In this last verse, we can find hope.  Despite all the desolation, despite all the destruction and fire, something vital remains:  a stump, a seed. 

When it seems as if all is gone and all is lost, don't lose heart.  God has a seed remaining in it all. This holy seed will shoot forth new branches, new growth, new life!  In this one verse, we can see a glimpse of the hope of the gospel to come 700 years later.  

Christ is our holy seed.  Christ is the stump that survives it all.  We always have hope because of the gospel!  We always have light because of the seed that is Christ's death and resurrection.  

In Matthew, Jesus tells us a story about a seed as well:

"...for truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there', and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you."

We only need faith as small as a seed to move a mountain.  If you can't seem to find faith that small, the verse in Isaiah brings encouragement. It's not the people that provide the stump and the holy seed: it's the LORD. 

The seed in Isaiah's time seemed too small to cause new growth and life.  The mustard seed of faith Jesus spoke of seems too small to move a mountain. It's true - apart from our Father, these would be too small to do anything.  So we give them to Jesus.  We give our Father that little stump.  We give our Father that little seed of faith.  We watch Him work wonders in the darkness that surrounds us.  

We have hope for our situation.  We have hope for our nation.  We have hope for the world.  

It's found at the cross where Christ secured our future, our life, and this war.  Though it may not seem like it at times, remember that Christ has already won this battle against evil in this world. God is the victor, and Satan cannot take that hope away - no matter what.