Excerpted from 2025 Advent Guide: Lighting the Way Forward, an Advent Guide for Lectionary Year A from the North Carolina Council of Churches.
Isaiah 60:1-6
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth
and thick darkness the peoples,
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Lift up your eyes and look around;
they all gather together; they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away,
and your daughters shall be carried in their nurses’ arms.
Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you;
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.
Can you see it; the scene Isaiah is creating with these words? For the people who hear Isaiah’s words, this scene is a fantasy. They are forsaken people, having been invaded by a neighboring country years earlier. Some folks remained in their own towns living among the ruins of pillaged farms, destroyed infrastructure, and demolished houses. Some escaped and fled as refugees to other lands that were not being destroyed by war and famine. Some were captured and moved to other places, forced to make a new life in a foreign land. The events preceding these words from Isaiah afflicted the people of Judah almost 2500 years ago. But I can think of several other places where this very thing is happening at this very moment . . .
In the face of such a catastrophe, with trauma living on through the generations, Isaiah dares to proclaim this Word from the Lord:
“. . . your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried in their nurses’ arms (v. 4).”
The people hearing these words have not seen their children in decades, but Isaiah presents them with a picture of boys and girls coming to meet their parents because that’s how their parents remember them—small children, dependent children, children unable to survive without the care of a concerned adult. That care is typically provided by parents until the child is old enough to survive alone, but these parents were separated from their children—at the border.
There are other unlikely scenes offered by Isaiah to this group of forsaken people. New wealth will arrive by sea on ships and by land on camels. Nations and their leaders will come to pay homage with offerings of gold and frankincense (items that will also be laid at the feet of the baby Jesus half a millennium later). The glory of the Lord “will appear over you” (v. 2).
These are wonderful sights to behold, but it is the images of the children that stop my heart. Coupled with the destruction of the children and their lives that we have witnessed in the past few years: starvation in Sudan (and now starvation in Gaza), orphans wandering the streets of Gaza, children fleeing the destruction of Ukraine, just to name a few, I want to cling to a scene of skipping, spinning, dancing children coming down the streets of their ancestors’ towns. Happy-go-lucky children returning to a place they’ve never been, but a place that holds the memory of God’s promise and the hope of God’s future.
Arise, shine; for your light has come . . . (v. 1).
May the children come soon into the light of peace, allowing for God’s promise that all those created in God’s image are meant to flourish and thrive.
