The Stump in Mrs. Nakamura's Yard

In 2011, the tsunami that devastated Fukushima, Japan, stripped the coastal town of Rikuzentakata down to mud and silence. Among the 70,000 pine trees that once lined Takatamatsubara beach, only one survived — a single, battered tree standing amid miles of destruction. The Japanese called it kiseki no ipponmatsu, the Miracle Pine.

But here is what strikes me most. Before that lone pine became a symbol of hope, it looked like nothing. A torn, salt-soaked trunk. Broken limbs. No reasonable person would have looked at that ragged remnant and said, "There — that's the future."

Isaiah would have.

The prophet looked at the royal line of David — once magnificent, now hacked down to a stump by exile and failure — and declared that a shoot would spring from that dead wood. Not from a thriving forest, but from a stump. Not from strength, but from what everyone else had written off.