The Peaceable Kingdom
Edward Hicks, 1833

My dear friends,

Greetings and blessings to all my dear friends around the world. Today, let us embark upon a journey through the profound wisdom encapsulated in Isaiah 65:17-25, and let us unveil together the path to a world of harmony, peace, and compassionate living.

In these sacred verses, there unfolds a vision of a new earth and heavens, where sorrow and pain are relics of a past, and jubilation and delight in each other’s existence become our shared reality. But, dear friends, this transformation, this new existence, is not born from a passive waiting for divine intervention. Rather, it blossoms from the rich soils of our innate human capacities – love, compassion, and wisdom.

The future is not a destination that is bestowed upon us but a garden that we must tenderly cultivate. Each of us, like seeds of potential, contains within ourselves the capacity to nourish the world around us. Our own mental disposition, our own thoughts, and our own actions are the principal arbiters of our destiny.

The ‘new heavens and a new earth’ that Isaiah speaks of is achievable, not through passivity, but through an active commitment to cultivating our inner virtues. Love, the foundational virtue, empowers us to view each being as worthy of respect, care, and kindness. Compassion, the heart’s response to suffering, incites us to alleviate the pain of others as we would our own.

And wisdom, the lamp that illuminates the path of righteousness, guides our steps in the intricate dance of moral and ethical living. Our enhanced understanding through learning and reflection aids in unraveling complex issues of existence and coexistence.

In this age where technology has made the world a global village, we have the unprecedented opportunity to build bridges across the chasms of racial, cultural, and national divides. Technology can be a vessel that carries the message of love, compassion, and wisdom to every corner of the earth. Let it be a tool for global unity, a catalyst for a universal brotherhood and sisterhood, fostering generosity, moral discipline, patience, and perseverance.

To ‘build houses and inhabit them’, to ‘plant vineyards and eat their fruit’ is a metaphor not merely for material prosperity, but for a life where the labor of our hands and the aspirations of our hearts find fulfillment in service to the common good. Where every being is accorded the opportunity to thrive, to grow, and to contribute to the collective well-being.

‘The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox’. This is a clarion call for harmony amidst diversity. It is not uniformity that is our strength, but our diverse colors, diverse beliefs, and diverse ways of life. When embraced with love and respect, they weave the beautiful tapestry of our human family.

So, my dear friends, Isaiah’s vision is not a distant utopia, nor a divine edict. It is a clarion call to each soul to awaken to its highest potential. It beckons us to rise above pettiness, greed, and divisiveness, to ascend to a plane where love is our language, compassion our currency, and wisdom our compass. Let us together, hand in hand, step into this new earth and new heavens, not as passive recipients, but as active creators of a world resplendent with the divine lights of love, peace, and harmony."

May peace and blessings abound in your lives, and may we together witness the dawn of a world where every being is cherished, every life is honored, and every soul is at peace.