Loading...Jesses had seven sons. God chose the youngest, David. to become the King of Israel and to establish the Kingdom of God in perpetuity [l’olam in hebrew]. The perpetuity part didn’t work out so well. Instead of an amazing forest of cedars, the heritage of Jesse became a stump. And what good is a stump. A stump is a place to sit if you are a poet like Shel Silverstien. A stump is an obstacle over which you can trip and tear a hole in the knee of your expensive running pants if you like trail running. A stump is what you pay a person with a stump grinder what feels like an exorbitant amount of money to remove from your front yard. A stump is itself lifeless and vulnerable to saprotrophs.
Except... Every dead old stump possesses a secret vitality hidden deep in its roots. If you’ve ever taken a walk along a nature trail you’ve seen this phenomenon: There is one tree full grown and tall whose bark looks perfectly fine but not one leaf is growing from it’s branches. Next to it in the undergrowth, often obscured by rotting leaves and debris, is one old stump dark and decaying except for one shoot of life growing right out of its roots strong and straight towards the sun.
Nature possesses the peculiar power to give life, or not.
God is free to appoint a king, and to grant that king the freedom to fail at perpetuity part of the arrangement.
What secret salvation hides deep within the failure?
Somewhere in the loam: - the dark decay of generations cut off by exile, mulched with collusion, ground down by shame, emerges a small sprouting green…. girl.
The Book of Acts tells me that the perpetuity part of God’s kingdom worked out after all-- not by virtue of a powerful military government with immeasurable wealth like the kingdom established by Jesse’s son. 
The perpetuity part of God’s plan is delivered through a young woman who could trace her tree roots to a very, very old woman, older than days and given up for dead.
Snake-bite is what got her. Stump’s sprout is what saves her.
Eve’s root dwells glorious in Mary’s womb.
