Vessel & Altar

Take care you remain tranquil and do not fear; let not your courage fail before these two stumps of smoldering brands. - Isaiah 7:4a

The heart of the king and the heart of the people trembled - like the trees of the forest tremble in the wind. The trembling is named precisely and without condemnation. The threat is real. The response is real. And then the prophet arrives and names what the threat actually is: stumps. The fire is almost out. What looks like the end is a smoldering remnant.

Unless your faith is firm you shall not be firm. The woman who is trembling before the stumps of her own situation needs exactly this word: what you are inside has not been changed by what has assembled outside. The city is still upheld. You are still standing on what you were standing on before the armies arrived.

Kateri Tekakwitha held the faith in a community that opposed it, as a woman whose practice set her apart from everything familiar. She received the word that she was standing on something that stumps could not reach. She named the stumps as stumps and lived from the city that God upholds.

Name the stumps. The specific fears, the specific threats, the specific assembling armies that are producing the trembling in your life right now. Write them down. Then write: these are stumps of smoldering brands. The fire is almost out. And then: God upholds his city forever. I am inside it. What changes when you receive that?

Lord, let not my courage fail before stumps. Let the faith be firm so that I shall be firm. And let the trembling be named accurately - not as the end but as smoldering remnants of what cannot overcome the city where God dwells. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.