A few years back, Kansas City experienced an ice storm that no one who saw will ever forget. A huge number of trees were downed. Many people shivered without power for upwards of a week. Even today, you can see hundreds of scarred trees that must have been damaged in that one fateful day of ice.
Living at the time in the dome house, we didn’t experience much problem from the ice. A couple of our Lombardy poplars lost significant branches, but they all recovered nicely by the end of that season. A full-grown Bartlett pear on the west side of our yard didn’t fare so well, however. After the thaw, I went about the yard to inspect the damage and found something remarkable when I came to this tree.
Very low to the ground, this little ornamental split into four main branches, each of which angled off in a different direction. Those four main branches had each split apart so that the tree lay quartered on the ground with only a few inches of trunk remaining upright. The quarters had fallen neatly in quite convenient directions, doing no secondary damage. An hour or so with some light tools had the whole mess cleaned up and ready to be pitched into a ditch in our pasture. I sawed the stump off as close to ground level as I could manage and reconciled myself to a blank spot in the yard.
In the season after that tree went down, I wasn’t surprised to see a series of tiny green shoots emerge from the stump and surrounding area. Since I had cut the stump off quite low, the shoots never got a chance to grow more than a couple of inches tall before the lawnmower buzzed them into oblivion. Even if I had let them grow, it would have been ages before one of them grew into a respectable replacement tree.
The shoot that emerges from the stump of Jesse in this, the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, is not comparable with the shoots that rose out of that ruined Bartlett pear. Like a desirable variety of apple tree grafted into an ordinary rootstock, the shoot of chapter eleven is something special. Sure, Jesse’s family produced David and Solomon, but the shoot is more than just a king. “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him,” we are told. “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes . . . but with righteousness he will judge the needy.” This shoot will bear fruit that David and Solomon could scarcely imagine, and it will grow to maturity despite the efforts of many would-be gardeners to cut it down to size.
In the midst of the bleak prophecies of Isaiah, we have here a marvelously hopeful one, a vision of the Messiah, Jesus, springing from the roots of Jesse. Only the God who created the universe can bend it to his will so effectively that from the ruins of destroyed trees will spring such a fruitful branch, a branch far better than the trees it replaces. All we can do is stand back and marvel at his grace.
Tune My Heart is primarily an aid to the devotional life of its author, Mark Browning, who holds the copyright for this material. It is provided online in hopes that some will find it edifying. All contents, unless otherwise noted, may be redistributed freely provided that you give credit for its origin and do not charge anything.