In the holy mountain of the Lord, all war and strife will cease;
In the holy mountain of the Lord, creation will be at peace.
The wolf will lie down with the lamb, the cow and the bear will feed,
Their young will lay together; a little child will lead.
The leopard and goat will graze, the lion will feed on straw.
They will war no more. A child will lead them all.
---J. Paul Williams
In this beautiful setting from the prophet Isaiah, Williams envisions a world at peace. what catches me off-guard is that a little child is the only human mentioned. In my mind, I picture creation at peace, until humans come in and screw things up. This setting reminds me that human and animal nature both tend toward violence, domination, and power-grabbing. When we speak of 'the way of the world', it is this world of which we speak. This 'mine, mine, mine', every man for himself, dog-eat-dog world, where there is a 'king of beasts', and a 'king of the mountain', and a 'top dog'. But Jesus, the little child foreshadowed in Isaiah's prophecy, was a topsy-turvy kind of savior; he of the littlest, least, lost, and lonely. In Jesus' vision of the world, even natural animal adversaries can take on a peace nature. Creation itself. and all that is in it, can live at peace.
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