Isaiah is one of the principal voices of Advent. We begin the season with his prophetic vision of the “peaceable kingdom,” the place of harmony and concord. Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together. In our more cynical age one wag observed, the lion might lie down with the lamb but the lamb won’t get much sleep. The idea of a world living in peace, where everyone is treated with dignity, where the powerful and strong don’t prey on the vulnerable seems like a pipe dream. Get real Isaiah, one might be tempted to say. Which is why Jesus holds up the “childlike” as the ideal disciple. Children believe in impossible things — the man who flies, the animals that talk, the power of a magical word. They understand that we are not limited by the brute facts which limit us. God can, in fact, do something new. Advent is the time for God to do something new in our lives.
