If your heart aches for our world in the same way as mine, may I offer this musical prayer for you.
Diana Butler Bass shared this song in her Advent meditations, and it feels like a prayer that needs to be sent into the world over and over.
If there ever was a word of hope that needs to be spoken, sung, whispered, and shouted to the world it is this one.
"The Dream Isaiah Saw" was composed in 2001 by Glenn L Rudolph. Thomas H. Troegers wrote the lyrics. May its words find lodging in your heart as you listen. May we, in companionship with God bring the dream to fruition. May the dream come to life through our steps of peace and acts of love.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
life redeemed from fang and claw.
Peace and Merry Christmas!
Ruth
The Dream Isaiah Saw
Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay,
leopards will join with the lambs as they play,
wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade,
blood will not darken the earth that God made.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
life redeemed from fang and claw.
Peace will pervade more than forest and field:
God will transfigure the Violence concealed
deep in the heart and in systems of gain,
ripe for the judgment the Lord will ordain.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Justice purifying law.
Nature reordered to match God's intent,
nations obeying the call to repent,
all of creation completely restored,
filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
life redeemed from fang and claw.