He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Isaiah 53:2 (NIV)
A Root Out of Dry Ground
The rows come apart while there are still people walking them. The good lights go down first because they’re the expensive part, the tables fold, and whatever didn’t sell goes back into the same newspaper it came out of. The dealers who set up with velvet and a spotlight over the case are the ones with the least left to pack.
He’s there at pack-up the same as he’s there at setup, no table of his own, nothing in the cloth grocery bag under his arm. He was on the lot when the trucks came in and he watched the man with the velvet case take it down off the same box truck as the crate of mismatched flatware and the plain pine box that have sat on the ground all day at a dollar apiece. Everybody who came down that aisle after nine saw a lit case, and priced everything else by how far it sat from the light.
Dry ground doesn’t grow much, and what it grows comes up small. He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. A tender shoot breaks between two fingers, and a root in dry ground is growth going on where the conditions say it shouldn’t.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Nothing in his appearance was all the eye had to work with, and the eye went on past. He grew up before him, and that one saw all of it, and wasn’t going by looks.
The dealer calls a dollar for anything left on the ground, and three people who walked that row all afternoon come back for it. The pine box goes to a woman who wants it for cords. He’s out past the gate by then, down the sidewalk with the bag folded flat under his arm and nothing in it.
A Prayer to Remember
Thank you for dry ground, Father, and for a root that came up out of it anyway. Thank you that there was nothing in his appearance to pull a crowd, so whoever came had to be coming for something else. You watched the whole of that growing, and the ones who looked saw nothing to want.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
