Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Peaceable kingdom (Chris Walters)

   We are currently in the season of Advent.  This is the season we wait expectantly for the transformed world.  And this is the season that we hope... for many different things and desires of our hearts to be fulfilled...
   [However,] if we do not imagine for ourselves how we may contribute to the building up of the peaceable kingdom and then persistently act upon our hopeful imagination in that kingdom, then we do not have hope at all.  True hope cannot be experienced vicariously or attained through a vision… Unless we generate within ourselves the Isaiah 11 hope for a radically transformed world, then we will be chronically disappointed in the world as it is and further delay the realization of the future reality of Isaiah’s harmony by not participating with each other in ways that encourage a spirit of wisdom and understanding…

--Chris Walters, Hope for Transformation

Image source:  John August Swanson, Peaceable Kingdom, whose style is “influenced by the imagery of Islamic and medieval miniatures, Russian iconography, the color of Latin American folk art, and the tradition of Mexican muralists.”

Quotation source:  To read the whole of Chris Walters reflection on Isaiah 11, including a variety of artistic representations of this beautiful passage, click here.

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