Isaiah looks past the coming devastation and sees a stump, and out of the stump, a green shoot. From the cut-down line of Jesse will come a King on whom the Spirit rests, and under His reign the wolf will lie down with the lamb.

God specializes in stumps. Whatever looks finished in your life may only be pruned. Read today's promise from wherever you feel cut down.

Assyria thought it was the axe that mattered. Israel thought the stump meant the end. Both were wrong the same way: they mistook instruments and setbacks for the final word, when the final word was already germinating, a shoot, a Spirit-carried King, an earth flooded with knowing God.

Psalm 56 keeps the promise personal. The God growing history's shoot also counts your tossings and bottles your tears. Nothing about your pruned season is unrecorded or unredeemable. Wolves and lambs are on His schedule. So is your stump.