I can’t get enough of the Peaceable Kingdom. Give me all the art, all the songs, all the happy moments of holy imagining perfect shalom. Peace with God, peace with our bodies, peace with our neighbors, peace among the nations, peace in and on and through the entire creation.

My mother-in-law shared a powerful song (that’s new to me) that she and my sister-in-law got to experience live last night — The Dream Isaiah Saw.

Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay,
Leopards will join with the lambs as they play,
Wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade,
Blood will darken the Earth that God made.

Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Life redeemed from fang and claw.

Peace will pervade more than forest and field:
God will transfigure the Violence concealed
Deep in the heart of systems gain,
Ripe for the judgment the Lord will ordain.

Little Child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Justice purifying law.

Nature reordered to match God’s intent,
Nations obeying the call to repent,
All of creation completely restored,
Filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord.

Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Knowledge, wisdom, worship awe.

—Thomas Troeger

All forms of violence — genocide, Alzheimer’s, terrorism, cancer, racism, greed, fatal accidents, abuse of the earth — will purified and transformed.

Put right. Renewed. Recreated.

Disease and death have come to steal, kill, and destroy. And we all have lost, are losing, or will lose things incredibly precious to us. It’s horrible. It’s impossible.

But then.

But then.

But then.

But then the dream that Isaiah saw, the dream God planted in all our hearts to yearn and sometimes yell for — it will become true. It’s almost too wonderful to believe. But it’s the only thing that’s possible.

Because of God’s dream. And the little child whose bed was straw.