A city is not rebuilt overnight. The book of Isaiah is a long and winding journey—66 chapters that span centuries of history, heartbreak, and hope. The people Isaiah is addressing have seen devastation. Their city, Jerusalem, has been conquered. Their temple has been destroyed. Many of them have been taken from their homes and sent into exile. They have lost not just their land, but their sense of identity, their security, and their place in the world.
Doesn’t that sound familiar?
Like much of the Old Testament, it’s not the cheeriest of books. The first two-thirds of the book are full of lament and warning. There are calls to repentance and stark portrayals of judgment. But as the book progresses, a new tone begins to emerge. A tone of comfort. Of healing. Of homecoming. God is not finished with His people. There is a promise on the horizon—not just of survival, but of restoration.
And then we come to this final chapter. Isaiah 66 is the last word of the whole book. And rather than ending with grandeur or finality, it ends with the tender image of a mother.
If you’ve heard me preach before, you’ll know that I will try and get a bit of feminism into a sermon any way I can. Luckily for today’s reading I don’t have to try too hard. This passage from Isaiah comparing God’s love and care to a mother, and a nursing one at that, is beautiful, nourishing , and loving. Too often in the Old Testament we hear about God’s violence through floods, fire and brimstone, and pillars of salt. But this, this gentle comparison to someone and something that most of us can recognise, feels a lot kinder. You’ll be held in arms, says Isaiah. Bounced on a knee. Comforted like a child who’s fallen and needs to be scooped up and told everything will, somehow, be alright.
You may be wondering why I am focussing on the Old Testament reading today. It is because for me, right now, it feels particularly pertinent. I have some news to share with you. I am pregnant. It is still early, but I hope you’ll agree that I couldn’t preach on this reading without acknowledging my current state. Being pregnant has made me read this passage differently. And in this early stage of pregnancy, one of the things I’m learning all over again is how much hope involves waiting. It involves trust. It involves surrendering control. Your body is not just your own anymore. You can’t see the growth day by day, but you trust that it’s happening. You nurture it. You rest. You eat. You feel sick. You sweat. You pray.
That’s the lens through which I found myself reading Isaiah 66 this week, and it moved me more deeply than ever before. Because Isaiah speaks about something being restored, something being born. And it isn’t described with power or conquest - it’s described with motherhood. With nourishment. With comfort. With something new arising from what looked like ruins. For me, those ruins were eating ritz crackers in bed yesterday at 5am to stop me from throwing up.
Isaiah’s readers had lived through destruction. They were mourning the life they’d lost. But God says to them: “Rejoice.” Not because everything was already fixed, but because something new was beginning. Jerusalem, once desolate, would become a place of comfort and joy again.
This is the way God often works. God brings new life from ruins. God restores what was broken. God doesn’t erase the pain—but redeems it. I have thought in these early days about the life I’ve seemingly “lost”, and yes, I have mourned it. The idea that I can’t do everything I want when I want anymore. Hypotheticals that are now definite, and possibilities that are now impossible. But in the mourning, I have tried to see the new, what to look forward to, and what this new life will bring to mine and my husband’s existing lives.
When looking for advice in the Bible, especially as a woman, I would not immediately turn to Paul, but today, he might have produced a rare win.
In Galatians 6, we get some agricultural advice: “You reap what you sow.” This phrase is often used in response to someone getting what they deserve, in a negative sense. Karma. But Paul isn’t threatening his readers; he’s encouraging us. He knows we’re tired. He says so: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest.”
This, too, feels deeply relevant. Whether you’re nurturing a child, a community, or just trying to hold things together for another week, day or hour, - there are seasons when you feel like you’re sowing endlessly, and seeing nothing grow.
Unusually for Paul, who is normally so focussed on rules and regulations, he says that none of that matters, but what counts is creation. It doesn’t matter whether you’re wearing the right thing or saying the right words, what matters is whether something has begun in you. Not necessarily a baby, but has god sparked something in you that you want and need to nurture? Is there the beginning of grace that you want to grab onto? The beginning of something new coming from a ruin? The ruin doesn’t have to be like the one from Isaiah’s time, but it could be something small, like a bad day at the office or an argument with a family member. What good can you grow out of that? What good can grow out of me yesterday shaking while eating a hotdog because I didn’t eat enough breakfast? A new life that is draining all my resources. I suppose that’s good!
And then we come to Luke 10, where Jesus sends out 72 of his followers with instructions that amount to: “Take nothing, say little, expect rejection.” In other words: a priest’s job description.
Jesus sends them out in pairs, which is comforting - because ministry, like childbirth and gardening, is not meant to be a solo sport. And he tells them to speak peace. To heal. To announce that “the kingdom of God has come near.”
Not “the kingdom of God will arrive once the paperwork is in order.” Not “the kingdom of God is located three towns over.” No—the kingdom has come near. It’s already brushing up against our ordinary lives.
The disciples come back rejoicing. Things went better than expected. But Jesus, ever the spiritual realist, says: Don’t rejoice that spirits submitted to you. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
In other words: don’t anchor your joy in what you can achieve, or control, or count. Anchor your joy in the deeper truth—that you are known and loved by God. The creation counts, not just what we create, but what we were created to become.
So let’s gather these three threads together:
Isaiah says: God is doing something new, and it looks like comfort.
Paul says: Keep going—something is growing, even if you can’t see it yet.
Jesus says: The kingdom is near, and your place in it is already secure.
None of this is loud. None of it is fast. But all of it is true.
And all of it speaks to the kind of hope that takes root in ruins—whether those ruins are personal, communal, or just the general state of things.
Isaiah says, “Your heart shall rejoice.” It’s worth noting he doesn’t say, “Your circumstances shall improve dramatically by next Tuesday.”
Joy, in scripture, is not a mood. It’s not naïve optimism. It’s not pretending things are better than they are.
Joy is what happens when we glimpse—even briefly—that God has not forgotten us. That God is still at work. That, as one wise priest once put it, “God is still God, and we are still God’s.”
So yes, rejoice—not because everything is sorted, but because something sacred is growing.
As I reflect on these passages, I can’t help but think of this strange little phrase that’s been floating in my head: we are all pregnant with promise.
Some of us may not look it. Some of us may not feel it. But in each of us, God is growing something. A seed of peace. A glimpse of hope. A longing for renewal. A capacity to love.
And we may not be able to measure it. We may not be able to explain it at vestry meetings. But it is there.
And if God can bring a baby out of morning sickness.
If God can bring comfort out of exile…
Then perhaps—just perhaps—God is doing something in you, too.
Something slow. Something real. Something holy.