Finding God’s Life

We might prefer our hope to emerge from established institutions, through careful management and incremental improvement. But Isaiah and John the Baptist refuse us that comfort. There is life, a green shoot rising from a felled tree; and a wild prophet preaching on the edges of society.

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.” David’s dynasty has failed, the kingdom has collapsed, and all that remains is seemingly useless. Yet this is precisely where new life begins: with honest acknowledgement of endings, with confession of failure. From that hidden place, far below, the remnant survives and life rises again.

The question isn’t what happened to the tree.

The question is: what new thing is God’s indomitable life growing, here, now?

John strips everything back to basics in the wilderness, away from the temples and corridors of power, in places of risk and exposure where we stop pretending and see what’s real. When George MacLeod saw declining congregations and devastating poverty in 1930s Glasgow, he didn’t try to revive the stump. He took the remnant shoot to a ruined abbey on Iona, where it grew into something new: a radical community committed to peace, justice, and economic sharing that still challenges us nearly a century later.

Neither prophet will let us spiritualise this vision away from concrete justice. Isaiah’s ruler “judges the poor with righteousness and decides with equity for the humbled.” John confronts religious elites, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance!” calling them to new ways; to tangible, visible transformation. It is not about our inherited culture and tradition, not even about what we believe. The question is “What fruit are we bearing?” Do our lives and our budgets reflect kingdom priorities?

We’ve tamed nature for productivity, reshaped it for profit, reduced it to being a resource rather than a partner in our community. The wolf and the lamb don’t live together; we’ve eliminated the wolf and factory-farmed the lamb. Isaiah’s vision calls us to raise our eyes and open our minds to the possibility of a complete reordering of our ways. What if we measured success not by extraction rates but by the flourishing of all life? This isn’t sentimentality. It is revolutionary. And it is perfectly possible.

John promises baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. Like South African proteas that need wildfire to bloom, we require the Spirit’s refining heat to become what we’re created to be. The fire clears competing attachments, breaks open what we’ve kept sealed, prepares us for unprecedented flourishing.

In dry places, amidst destruction, look for that remnant of life that is the one green shoot holding God’s promise. Listen for the wilderness voice calling us to turn, to open our eyes, because the kingdom of God is among us. And the fire of God’s love will heal and restore not just us, but all creation.