Advent in 100 Words: December 17

"Many poets betray in their work or their lives some original wound their art tries to heal."¹ Isaiah's Advent poetry displays 'original wounds' of exile and lost identity.

What do you say to people whose identity is being erased, their religious roots torn up, homes dismantled, and their gardens and fields left to waste? Now in an alien land, under foreign power, scared of God, afraid to hope? 

Something like this.  

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.

^{1. Lachlan Mackinnon, Obituary for Seamus Heaney.}