The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. – Jeremiah 23:5

Today's Scripture Reading (July 5, 2023): Jeremiah 23

Many years ago, I had a neighbor with an unsightly stump on his front lawn. My neighbor had worked hard to get the stump down to the ground level, but it was still a visible feature of his front yard. And I would watch as he would come out and look at it, trying to decide what should be his next step in the development and appearance of his property.

So, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that I walked outside my house one summer day to see my neighbor drilling down into the stump. I went up to him to watch what he was doing, and my friend stopped the process to speak to me for a moment. In what felt like it should have had a "do not try this at home" label attached, he said he had decided to use a small explosive to get rid of the stump. I have to admit, I am not sure I am courageous enough to try something like that on my property, but according to my neighbor, the explosive would break up the stump allowing him to take out large chunks of the offending wood. He argued that the rest of the stump would simply decay over the years to come, but while it decayed, his lawn could be reseeded so that the decay process was hidden under his new lawn, giving the property better curb appeal.

With great interest, I watched as my neighbor drilled the stump and poured the explosive down the hole he had created. Then he set a fuse and prepared to ignite the explosive. And I have to admit that as I watched, there were lingering doubts that what my neighbor was doing was even legal. I mean, what if he miscalculated the amount of explosive needed to destroy the stump? Maybe even more importantly, what if there were buried pipes or conduits in the area of the offending stump? I might not have lived in a major city, but it was an urban environment, and so many things could've gone wrong.

When the explosion happened, it was a bit anticlimactic. A little flame emerged from the hole, but nothing else. And it worked. My neighbor began to attack the stump with an axe, bringing up chunks of the remnant of the former tree.

That the Messiah would come from the line of David was an old prophecy. But the people must have wondered if that could ever become a reality in light of Jeremiah's prophecy that no one from the line of Jeconiah or Jehoiachin would ever sit on the throne of a restored Israel. What could that mean regarding the coming of the future Messiah?

And so, God answers that concern. Yes, the line of Jeconiah was dead; it was like a stump left after a lumberjack had cut down a tree. But God reserved the right for a new shoot or a righteous branch to emerge from what was dead. The stump might be unsightly, but with God, life in the form of the Messiah could still emerge from it. And one day, that is precisely what happened.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 24