December 18: The Reign of Jesse's Offspring
♫ Music:
Day 16 - Monday, December 18
Title: THE REIGN OF JESSE’S OFFSPRING
Scripture #1: Isaiah 11:1–3 (NKJV)
There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
Scripture #2: Isaiah 11:3–5 (NKJV)
His delight is in the fear of the Lord, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears; But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, And faithfulness the belt of His waist.
Scripture #3: Isaiah 11:10 (NKJV)
“And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, who shall stand as a banner to the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place shall be glorious.”
Poetry & Poet:
“Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower”
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space
around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
THE REIGN OF JESSE’S OFFSPRING
“There shall come forth…” I feel the reverb on that proclamation. Like a distant thunder rumble. An austere and resolute declaration, like a judge’s gavel sealing his decision.
In the preceding sentence, the Lord is seen as a woodsman with an ax, chopping down Israel’s enemy like a mighty tree. Then, as though the vision of a chopped down tree is eerily similar to the present plight of Israel, the prophet turns his attention away from the imminent demise of the invading army and looks upon his own people.
Do their faces show the weariness of war? Do their shoulders slump with the arduous task of rebuilding their lives? Have months or years of trauma shocked them into a daze of hopelessness, an inability to envision a future beyond today’s grief? "What is it like, such intensity of pain?” (Rilke)
Moved by a passion beyond his own, Isaiah erupts with the intensity of divine love. Like a ringing bell awakening God’s people to hope, the prophet insists, “There shall come forth. …”
Nothing and no one can stop the plan of God Almighty to bring peace to His people in all its fullness and with utter finality. A leader is coming, like David but not like David. Perfect in righteousness. Flawless in judgment. Powerful, good, and true.
Just as when a tree is cut down, there is hope that it will sprout again and grow new branches (Job 14:7), Isaiah’s picture of a new branch sprouting out of an old stump is meant to revive their hearts.
Isaiah coaxes their dormant imaginations. The Branch will gladly do everything the Lord wants him to. In great wisdom, he will fulfill all the plans of God, by the power and Spirit of God.
His will be a reign of truth, not terror. He won’t be seduced by liars or manipulated by cheaters. Instead, he will see right through their wicked schemes, expose them for what they are, and put an end to it. He will guarantee help for the poor and provide justice for those robbed of their rights.
Much like Henrique Oliveira’s artwork depicting a disruptive tree trunk, so too the reign of Israel’s Promised One will break in and break up the white-washed constructs of this world’s systems and all the machinations of man. The holy upheaval of Messiah’s reign will reach far beyond Israel to touch every nation great and small.
Like a “rose e’er blooming…amid the cold of winter”, the Branch comes “to show God's love aright, …[and] dispels in glorious splendor the darkness everywhere” (Praetorius).
Take heart, weary one. God’s promise stands. Enter into his glorious rest. Messiah has come and is coming again soon. His reign won’t be stopped, and no plan of his will be thwarted.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, no matter the fierce battle at hand or the storm swirling around me today, help me to cling to you and never stop trusting you. My hope, my glory, and my King, I love you.
Amen
Kay Vinci, M.Div.
Writer and editor
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Desnatureza
Henrique Oliveira
2011
Scavenged piece of wood
3.1 x 3.8 x 3.6 meters
When artist Henrique Oliveira was a student in Sao Paulo, Brazil, there was a plywood fence outside his window that began to peel and fade into different layers and colors. When the fence was dismantled, Oliveira collected the remains and used them as raw materials for his senior show. Now, Oliveira continues to scavenge the dumpsters of Sao Paulo, the artist paints peels of wood after they are curled onto a PVC pipe skeleton. Oliveira chooses wood pieces that are already splitting and dying because they perfectly represent the decay of life in the city. Erupting from floors, doorways, and furniture, artist Henrique Oliveira’s artworks are a remarkable comment on the relationship between the built environment and the power of nature. In installations that explore the relationship between reality and otherworldly spectacle, enormous wooden limbs and vine-like forms emerge from walls and ceilings that have been cracked, broken, and twisted around the emerging growth, unable to contain it. Oliveira uses various readymade and organic materials such as bricks, wood, PVC, tree branches, mud, and other found items. He has incorporated tapumes, a Portuguese term for “enclosure” or “boarding,” which is typical of the plywood fencing installed around his home city of Sao Paulo that becomes weathered and varied in color and texture. Pieces range in size from a few feet, such as furniture works like “Chest of Drawers,” to immense installations that sprawl across expansive exhibition spaces. Many of Oliveira’s works are permanently on view around the world.
––– Adapted from an essay by Eugene Kim
https://mymodernmet.com/tree-trunks-burst-through-gallery-walls
http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/defaultUS.asp
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/04/henrique-oliveira-nature-architecture/
About the Artist:
Henrique Oliveira (b. 1973) is an interdisciplinary installation artist who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Graduating from the University of São Paulo in 1997, the artist explores fluidity, and the combination and color of materials, which endows his installations with a certain pictorial quality. Oliveira often borrows materials from the Brazilian urban landscape, notably tapumes, wood taken from fences surrounding and blocking access to construction sites. By using these materials, Oliveira highlights the endemic and parasitic nature of these constructions; evoking wooden tumors, his installations function as a metaphor for the favelas’ organic growth, thus revealing the dynamic decay of São Paulo’s urban fabric.
http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/defaultUS.asp
https://palaisdetokyo.com/en/personne/henrique-oliveira/
About the Music:
“Lo, How A Rose ‘Ere Blooming” (Single)
"Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen" (literally "a rose has sprung up") is a Christmas carol of German origin. It is most commonly translated into English as "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." The hymn makes reference to the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah, which foretell the incarnation of Christ, and to the Tree of Jesse, a traditional symbol of the lineage of Jesus. The hymn has its roots in an unknown author before the seventeenth century. It first appeared in print in 1599 and has since been published with a varying number of verses and in several translations. It is most commonly sung to a melody harmonized by the German composer Michael Praetorius in 1609. The hymn evokes the symbolic use of the rose to describe Mary sprouting from the Tree of Jesse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Es_ist_ein_Ros_entsprungen#:~:text=It%20emphasizes%20the%20royal%20genealogy,the%20father%20of%20King%20David.
Lyrics:
Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As seers of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.
Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The rose I have in mind;
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright,
She bore to us a Savior,
When half spent was the night.
This flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels in glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere;
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us,
And bears our every load.
About the Composer:
Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns. Praetorius was a tremendously prolific composer, his works showing the influence of contemporaries Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Schütz, as well as the Italians. His works include the nine volume Musae Sioniae (1605–10), a collection of over a thousand chorale and song arrangements; many other works for the Lutheran church; and Terpsichore (1612), a compendium of over three hundred instrumental dances, which is both his most widely known work, as well as his sole surviving secular work. His three-volume treatise Syntagma Musicum (1614–20) is a detailed text on contemporary musical practices and musical instruments, and is an important document in musicology, organology, and the field of performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Praetorius
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Michael_Praetorius
About the Performer:
Fernando Ortega is an evangelical Christian singer-songwriter and worship leader, heavily influenced by traditional hymns as well as his family’s New Mexican heritage. It is from his heritage and classical training at the University of New Mexico that Ortega derives his sound, embracing country, classical, Celtic, Latin American, world, modern folk, and rustic hymnody. Much of his current inspiration comes from the North American Anglican liturgy. From the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, he served in music ministry at a number of churches in New Mexico and Southern California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Ortega
http://www.fernandoortega.com/
About the Poetry and Poet:
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical." His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke
About the Devotion Author:
Kay Vinci, M.Div.
Writer and editor
Over the years, Kay has enjoyed writing for both adults and children. Vinci has written for a variety of publications, including magazines and journals, and has also written a self-published children’s story. Vinci graduated in 2011 with her M.Div. from Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. She enjoyed being part of the teaching team of her local church and developed a children's summer day camp curriculum. Retired now, her favorite role is being grandma to her three-year-old grandson Levi.