I'm Seeing It All Upside Down

There have been numerous pictures and stories shared over the past couple of years, on Face Book of animal, arch enemies cuddling, eating and playing together. A video on You Tube caught my interest of a polar bear in Hudson Bay, Canada making a most unlikely friendship with a wolf. I suppose that once and a while a friendship is forged that seems to surprise everyone but a dog, cat, and mouse? A monkey and pigeon? A bear, lion and tiger? Really now, a dog and fish?

The thought of such a relationship is one that fascinates me in its complexity (if not an accident waiting to happen). Though the friend who first sent me this story assured me that unusual bondings have occurred throughout the animal kingdom without bad endings, I still find myself leery of both the bear’s and wolf’s intentions. Can either really surrender its natural instincts to hunt? What happens when one gets in the other’s way of a Snowshoe rabbit meal? Can the nature of a polar bear or wolf remain reversed because of a relationship? 

In a significant prophecy of the coming Messiah (literally, anointed one) and his ensuing reign, Isaiah describes a scene full of similarly unusual relationships: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” Isaiah 11:6-9. 

It is inexplicable to me! As imaginative as I am, the scene is unimaginable to me . I would no sooner trust the cobra than I would trust the one who suggests I allow Claire, Brayden, or for that matter, any other of my grandchildren or my daughters reaching toward it.  Yet the vision speaks of a dramatic change in nature throughout God’s kingdom, where the aggressiveness and cruelty that are so much a part of this world will be forever changed. I will look at the relationship of the wolf and bear and not fear either’s trust of each other. With good reason, I ascribe such a reality as something God promises in the future, in heaven, when nature as I know it has passed away. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain; the wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the goat, for the old order of things will have passed away. I believe this is indeed an image of things to come. But, I ask myself; could it not also be something more? 

What if there is something about the coming of the Messiah that brings this scene to life right now?  This very week or day? What if the Incarnation of which I will fully celebrate in sixteen days—the coming of Jesus onto a first century scene—caused things on earth to be turned upside-down ever since? Like the brutal outlaw in one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, the Misfit, recognizes, there is something about the Incarnation that has “thrown everything off balance.” The mere presence of the source of all matter in my very midst, the Incarnate Christ coming to me in flesh and blood introduces a possibility of grace that changes the nature of everything. In O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find writes: “If He did what He said, then its nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if He didn’t, then its nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.” Isaiah depicts a world where lions and vipers will not kill; young lambs will rest peacefully beside predators, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” 11:9. It is unnatural for a wolf not to harm a defenseless lamb or a snake not to bite the hand that invades its nest. Is it any more natural that I should be able to defy my human nature? That I should claim the old has gone and left a new creation in its place? That I should find myself born a second time from above? 

Yet to bow before the person of Christ—in life, in prayer, in relationship, in community—is to lay my life at the feet of the One who was born and presently is both Lamb and Lion in a way that overturns these very notions of nature. In his work Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton finds fault with the way this is often envisioned. “It is constantly assured,” he writes “…that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?”

Father, God, You deserve nothing less than praise and worth from me this morning for this mystery that, somehow, Christ achieves it all. Just knowing Him is clinging to the fierce hope of transformation and the gentle assurance of new life—on earth and as it will one day be in heaven. I realize it is He alone who can reverse my nature and the nature of the polar bear and wolf: He is both Lamb and Lion! Amen