To the eyes of a child, a tiger is just an especially large and colorful cat. At least that’s what my brother thought – many more years ago than either of us would probably care to admit today – when he reached out trying to pet the big kitty’s tail during a family visit to the zoo.

Fortunately for us, my mother’s quick thinking kept the laws of nature from taking their course, as she snatched my brother out of harm’s way before he could learn for himself this carnivore probably wasn’t especially cuddly.

In the first reading for the Second Sunday of Advent, the prophet Isaiah announces a messianic springtime, looking forward to that day when “a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” On that day, says the prophet, “the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.”

If that were really nature’s ordinary way of doing business, my mother wouldn’t have had anything to worry about and the tiger would have purred contentedly.

Accustomed as we are to thinking of nature as “red in tooth and claw,” as the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson did, the prophet’s vegetarian vision just seems too good to be true.

Yet, as St. Paul teaches, “Whatever was written previously was written for our instruction, that by endurance and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how many words are a hundred paintings worth? That’s how many versions of Isaiah’s hope-filled prophecy of the “Peaceable Kingdom” were painted by Edward Hicks (1780-1849).

One of the best known U.S. folk artists of the colonial period, Hicks spent his entire life in Bucks County, PA, where the self-taught artist started his working career as a sign painter and a decorator of horse-drawn carriages. Hicks was a devout member of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian denomination popularly known as the “Quakers.” Founded in England in the 1700s, the Quakers are perhaps best known for their Peace Testimony, their steadfast commitment to a life of active nonviolence.

As Mary Lou Leavitt explains, “Quakers believe that more can be accomplished by appealing to (the) capacity for love and goodness, in ourselves and in others, than can be hoped for by threatening punishment or retaliation if people act badly. This is not to ignore the existence of evil. It is to recognize that there is no effective way to combat evil with weapons which harm or kill those through whom evil is working. We must turn instead…to the ‘weapons of the spirit’… ‘Spiritual weapons’ – love, truthsaying, nonviolence, imagination, laughter – are weapons that heal and don’t destroy.”

Quaker traveling preacher Edward Hicks never tired of using his God-given gifts as an artist to share Isaiah’s hopeful vision of the Peaceable Kingdom, using the “spiritual weapons” of his pigments and brushes and canvases. He makes it possible for us to imagine what the world might be like if fear and suspicion were to be replaced with trust, if childlike innocence were no longer to be regarded as a liability, as something that has to be outgrown in a dog-eat-dog world.

Again and again, Hicks found inspiration in the words of Isaiah, sometimes even framing his paintings with the verses of Isaiah 11 that he brought to life: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”

In the version of the “Peaceable Kingdom” painting that hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a young girl confidently leads a congenial lioness, her left arm gently wrapped around its mane, as leopard, lion, lamb and all the rest make the prophet’s hopeful words vividly visible.

In some versions of the painting (including the version that is found in the collection of New York’s American Folk Art Museum), Hicks depicts fellow Quaker William Penn in the distance on the left side of the canvas, engaging in peaceful negotiations with the Native Americans who were the first to inhabit what became Pennsylvania. In this way, Hicks makes it clear that the Peaceable Kingdom is not just a fabulous dream for some far-off distant future. On the contrary, preparing the way of the Lord is everyone’s responsibility in everyday deeds of peacebuilding at every level, among next door neighbors, as well as among nations.

Wielding his own formidable weapons of the spirit as the voice “crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’,” John the Baptist announced the advent of God’s Peaceable Kingdom in the person of the One who is the source and the fulfillment of our hope, and his voice echoes across the centuries to invite us to prepare His way.

“In hope we were saved,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, in the words from which Pope Benedict XVI’s just-released encyclical letter takes its Latin title, “Spe Salvi.”

In faith, Christians know that the hope on the basis of which we are redeemed has a name: Jesus the crucified and risen Christ, the sovereign of the Peaceable Kingdom announced by the prophet.

Come, Lord Jesus! Drive away our fear, and strengthen our hope as we work to help bring your peace to our world!

   Readings for the Second Sunday of Advent

   Isaiah 11:1-10
   Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17
   Romans 15:4-9
   Matthew 3:1-12