Advent Antiphon 4: "The dearest freshness"

A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,

and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

This  text from Isaiah is the basis for that exquisite Advent/Christmas carol "Lo, how a rose e'er blooming." It's about God being there, intervening in human history just when people thought the situation was impossible to salvage. The Davidic dynasty appeared to have gone irretrievably downhill with a succession of weak or downright corrupt kings. But God promised that all is not lost; David's royal line may have withered to a stump, but that stump still had a spark of life, and that life would blossom not just into another ordinary king but into into the King of Kings, the Savior of the world.
Another poetic verse comes to mind: "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "God's Grandeur." Hopkins was celebrating nature's unfailing capacity to renew itself after disaster and destruction. This Jesuit priest was a truly sacramental poet who saw God, and particularly Christ, reflected in the created world. Nature's capacity to renew itself: a reflection of what Isaiah sang about so many centuries earlier: the irrepressible vitality of God. Is there something in your life that needs a major revitalization by God?  Only you know the answer to that.