Advent Hope - Day 6

I sit looking at my dying bamboo shoot and decide to cut the dead shoot off. As I take it out of the vase, I am surprised to find a new shoot already growing, sturdy and bright green. Just as the baby is rooted in its mother unseen until it is time to be born, so my bamboo shoot was letting go of the old growth and making another shoot without my knowing. So I find myself, in Advent, reflecting on my spiritual practices, and how my roots of faith are becoming more firmly grafted into Him who is our life, our hope and is always showing us His abundant love.

O Radix

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,
Rose from a root invisible to all.
We knew the virtues once of every weed,
But, severed from the roots of ritual,
We surf the surface of a wide-screen world
And find no virtue in the virtual.
We shrivel on the edges of a wood
Whose heart we once inhabited in love,
Now we have need of you, forgotten Root,
The stock and stem of every living thing
Whom once we worshipped in the sacred grove,
For now is winter, now is withering
Unless we let you root us deep within,
Under the ground of being, graft us in.

Malcolm Guite

Scripture

Again, Isaiah says, “the root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall find hope.” May the God of all hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.   Romans 15: 11-13