My servant grew up in the Lord ’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. (Isaiah 53:2 NLT)

The most surprising aspect of the coming of our Savior was the manner in which He arrived. Didn’t we expect Him to enter with pomp and circumstance? He was God after all.

Instead he sent a fragile infant. So small. So ordinary. Not born in a castle or fortress, not delivered amongst kings and thrones. He was plain. Unremarkable. Born to simple parents in the most common and base surroundings.

Scripture continues and tells us that not only was He plain, He was:

despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. (Isaiah 53:3 NLT)

Our Lord came for the brokenhearted, those who suffer deeply, who have been lost, neglected and especially those who have been rejected. He himself experienced our hurts and deepest wounds.

And just like Christ, though we may feel small and inconsequential, forgotten even, in our darkest moments we are in fact in the Lords presence. He has never turned away from us.

When He saw we could no longer see, feel or hear Him in our despair. When we had turn away and run too far from Him to find our way back on our own, He intervened. He sent His Son to find us, save us, and forever heal us of our sin and the sin of the world that had wounded us.

So that we too could grow and flourish, even in a parched and dry land, even in the most difficult and unbearable of circumstances.

For if that small, tender child, that tiny seed, could grow to be the mighty tree with long branches that would save generations upon generations, so we too have hope of overcoming and becoming greater, better than we dare hope or imagine, God with us.