When we are in the middle of extended periods of difficulty, whether on a personal level, such as ill health, a difficult relationship, or a prolonged bout of loneliness, or in the collective, like a pandemic or war, it’s common to fall into a state known as ennui, a sort of existential boredom and lethargy. … Continue reading New Life on the Way: An Advent Reflection on Isaiah 35
I once had a dream in which I was in the hospital and diagnosed with a deficiency of hope. The doctor referred me to the ‘hope clinic’, but the closer I got to the clinic, the longer the hallways became, and the line of people waiting in front of me kept multiplying, from just a … Continue reading How Long? An Advent Reflection on Isaiah 25.1-10
When I would go back to Vancouver Island to visit my mother, one of our favorite things to do was to go for walks through the island’s beautiful coastal mist forests. On these walks we would often find ourselves stopped in our tracks at the sight of a new sapling emerging out of an old … Continue reading Life from Death: An Advent Reflection on Isaiah 11.1-10
Sunday’s post, the first in this series looking at the themes of Advent through the lens of the Book of Isaiah, saw how, after Isaiah opens with an oracle of incredible destruction for Judah, this is followed at the start of chapter 2 with a beautiful image of a time when not only would the … Continue reading All Is Not Lost: An Advent Reflection on the Remnant in Isaiah 1-12
The other week, I reflected on the Gospel reading in which Jesus expounds on what seems like a foretelling of a frightening future, but is really more a description of the human condition: Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and … Continue reading Hope of the Nations: An Advent Reflection on Isaiah 2.1-5
Matthew Root 