Signs of Life | Advent 2025

Several years ago, there was a program in Denver where you could apply for a free tree if you were going to plant it along a public space on your property. Our house had no trees in the front yard, but we had been thinking about buying one, so we applied and received a free tree! We got to look through the list of available trees and we picked one we were super excited about—a London Planetree, in case you were interested. And then a crew came and dug the hole and did all the work to plant said tree.

It was October, so when the tree was planted it only had a few dead leaves clinging to it. Well, then Spring came. The trees in our neighborhood started showing signs of new green life…and ours did not. Nothing happened. It stayed bare (or sticky as Link would say) Eventually, we cut the trunk down because, at that point, it was basically a stick planted in our front yard. 

But then one day, little suckers started growing up out of the stump. Somehow, what we thought was lifeless began to show signs of life, and not because we had done anything. We assumed it was dead, we stopped watering it, we chopped it down. But life emerged anyway. 

Isaiah 11 opens with a similar image: a felled stump, long declared dead, yet somehow sending up a shoot. A fruitful branch.

I tell you our sad tree story, not because the tree turned out beautifully—it didn’t, our neighbors called it our Charlie Brown tree—but I told it because that feeling, that moment of surprise when life emerges where you thought nothing could grow, shows up in far more important places in our lives.

We have all looked at some “stump” in our lives and thought, “Nothing good can grow here.” Maybe it shows up in habits we can’t seem to change. Maybe in relationships that feel permanently stuck. Maybe in dreams that feel long dead. 

This year, perhaps more than any other, I am struggling with the pain and brokenness that exists in my family of origin. At this point, I honestly cannot imagine that it will ever be better. The wounds run too deep, the old patterns remain unchanged. I also find myself in a near constant lament for how the American church has strayed from the teachings of Jesus, moving toward nationalism, racism, exclusion. How did we get here?

And this is where Advent meets us. Yes, Advent is a season of twinkle lights and hot chocolate, but it’s also a season that asks us to notice what feels lifeless, where we’ve lost hope. Because even while we wait in the darkness, God’s Spirit is at work in ways we cannot yet see.

We see this very thing in Isaiah’s vision.

Isaiah 11:1-9 (NLT)

Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root. And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He will delight in obeying the Lord. He will not judge by appearance nor make a decision based on hearsay. He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited. The earth will shake at the force of his word, and one breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked. He will wear righteousness like a belt and truth like an undergarment. 

In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all. The cow will graze near the bear. The cub and the calf will lie down together. The lion will eat hay like a cow. The baby will play safely near the hole of a cobra. Yes, a little child will put its hand in a nest of deadly snakes without harm. Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for as the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.

Beautiful right? But also a little strange. What is Isaiah even talking about? King David’s lineage, which God had promised to uphold, had been cut down. God’s people had failed to live out their side of the covenant. Their worship was hollow. Their leaders preyed on the vulnerable. Judgment was coming, and the future looked like death.

But in the midst of every prophetic warning in the Bible, there’s always a promise: of a remnant, a shoot, a reason to hope. 

Isaiah declares a hope so audacious it feels almost absurd: Isaiah gives us a vibrant image of a world made new under God’s rule—a kingdom where creation itself is re-ordered in peace. 

Isaiah describes the fruitful branch, a Spirit-led ruler who is wise, just, and attentive to the marginalized. A king unlike any before, ruling by the life and breath of God. And with that justice comes unimaginable peace—predators and prey living together, creation re-ordered in harmony.

One of my favorite OT scholars, Walter Brueggemann, puts it well: “the poem is about deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we—like lion, wolf, and leopard—will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination.”

Isaiah shows us God’s Spirit bringing life where all seems dead. And this is what Advent points to.

Fast forward to the New Testament. Israel had lived through generations of oppression and divine silence, and if anything they expected Isaiah’s words to be fulfilled through a mighty, victorious king. 

Instead, God acted in ways no one could have imagined—through the womb of a poor, unmarried, brown girl. Instead of a king, God sent a baby. A carpenter’s son. A rejected preacher. One who chose suffering over supremacy, vulnerability over violence, death over domination. God’s kingdom starts where we would never look for it. The shoot of Jesse grew out of an apparently dead stump.

Without the Advent surprise of the incarnation, we, like Israel, are “resigned to the possible.” Brueggemann’s words for the world as it is: endless injustice, relentless hostility, pervasive displacement, all of it accumulating into despair.” But God refuses that version of “possible.” Life breaks through where we least expect it. The Spirit enlivens what seems dead.

And this is not just cosmic-level salvation like in Isaiah, it is personal. 

We live between the lines: brokenness in one hand, hope in the other. How do we live in the already-not-yet-ness of God’s kingdom? First, we celebrate that the incarnation was not a one-time event. The incarnation of God in the person of Jesus was, I would argue, the most important event of all of human history. But the incarnation is God’s eternal promise; it happens over and over again. The same Spirit who rested on the shoot of Jesse, now lives in us. God changes us from the inside out through the grace and presence of God’s Spirit. She offers us the same gifts: wisdom, counsel, and delight in the Lord. 

When the world feels lifeless, despair is easy because we know we cannot fix it. I cannot fix my family. I cannot fix the American church. I can certainly pray for God to fix them, but then what? 

I believe, and yet seem to need to relearn over and over again, that the Spirit enables us to know God in ways that actually reshape us—our thinking, our behaving, our small everyday ways of showing up. But because of the way I’m hardwired, this leads me to thoughts of self-imposed pressure, and lots of striving.  But that is not God’s grace. God’s grace is the Spirit reshaping us through the quiet, surprising work of God within us. And when the Spirit changes us, even a little, I truly believe the people around us will feel it.

So now I want you to think back to the things in your life that feel lifeless. Because Advent invites us to pray for the Spirit to show us signs of life in those lifeless places. 

And Advent also challenges us to pray for the Spirit to help us show up differently in our relationships. In our families, marriages, friendships, church, neighborhoods, and daily rhythms. 

This is not a call to perfection, or to try to fix everything that feels broken. Only God can bring about salvation and new life. This is a call to let God’s new creation take root in us, to let life sprout in places we thought were dead.

So during this month of Advent, between the twinkle lights and candy canes, between the parties and the shopping, join me in asking the Spirit for two things: show me where life is breaking through, and grow life in me, too. 

The Spirit, who is within us, brings to life what we believed was lifeless.

To close, I want to pray the words of Paul, as beautifully interpreted by the late Eugene Peterson. This is ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭3‬:‭14‬-‭21‬ ‭MSG‬‬:

“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by [the] Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. 

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, [the] Spirit deeply and gently within us. Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia!”

Amen.