Chuck Swindoll Daily Devotional 29 March 2025, Insight For Today
TOPIC: A Tender Shoot
SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 53:2
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)
What did Christ look like to the men, women, and children who met Him? To be completely honest, probably not much like the images we see in stained-glass windows.
From clues in Scripture, His physical appearance was not impressive. He wasn’t tall, dark, and handsome. As the prophet foretold, the coming Anointed One had no “appearance that we should be attracted to Him.” He didn’t have pomp or flair—no stately form or majesty.
Instead, “He grew up . . . like a tender green shoot.” Fully human, a man with very real emotions, skin with delicate nerve endings, and tear ducts that were activated by sadness and grief. He found Himself moved with compassion and stung by sharp words. Though undiminished Deity, He lived among us in true humanity.
He appeared “like a root in dry ground.” This “dry ground” may refer to the land of Israel, which was nothing more than dust under a Roman boot when Christ came to earth. The world hated the Jews then as much of the world does now. Rome ruled over them with a rod of iron.
The Jewish people wanted a savior—a man on a white horse to deliver them from their oppressors. But they did not want the Savior, because Jesus was not what they expected, not what they desired; so they despised Him.
Isaiah 53 is a portrait of a crushed, chastened, scourged individual. Despite all His power and His unquestioned majesty, we must not picture Him as some kind of superhero. He was, truly, the Suffering Savior. Crushed and broken and bleeding, He pursued His God-ordained mission when He went to the cross for us.
No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And, pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole: can he have followed far
Who has no wound, no scar?
—AMY CARMICHAEL
Adapted by Insight for Living staff from The Darkness and the Dawn by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. Used by permission of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. www.harpercollinschristian.com