The God of the Impossible

I have always believed—and Scripture confirms it—that God is the God of the impossible. The entire history of salvation is a collection of moments in which God does what no one expected, what humanly could not be done, what seemed finished.

When we enter Advent, this truth becomes even more radiant. We remember the Virgin Mary: when the angel announces the conception of Jesus, he speaks a phrase that echoes through the centuries: “For nothing will be impossible for God.”
Mary does not fully understand, but she believes.
She cannot see the path ahead, but she trusts.
And in that humble trust, the greatest work of God in history begins.

The same is true with Abraham.
An elderly man, a sterile woman, a seemingly impossible promise.
And yet God tells him: “Look at the stars… so shall your descendants be.”
Abraham believed against all hope. He believed when there were no reasons left to believe. And God fulfilled His promise.

And today, in the prophet Isaiah, we hear of another impossibility that only God can accomplish:
“A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.”

A cut-down stump is useless; it is only the remnant of what once was. But that is precisely where God reveals Himself. The “dry stump” is the image of everything in our lives that we have declared lost: a broken relationship, a part of our history that still hurts, a deep exhaustion, an old sin, an uncertain future. There—right there—God says to us, “Look again.”

And from that dead stump a new life begins to grow. Not a great tree all at once, but a small shoot: humble, fragile, almost invisible. This is how God works:
great in the small,
powerful in what is fragile,
faithful in what others ignore.

Isaiah continues with images that seem impossible:
the wolf dwelling with the lamb,
the lion eating straw,
a child playing unafraid beside the snake’s den.
Impossible… for us.
But not for the God who transforms hearts.

This impossible peace is not a utopia. It is what happens when the Spirit of God rests upon a person—when hatred and tenderness, wounds and healing, guilt and grace, fear and trust… learn to coexist within the same heart.

Allow me to share a true story that sheds light on this prophecy.
After the genocide in Rwanda, a religious sister came face to face with the man who had murdered her brother. Although she prayed each day, she admitted:
“Inside me lived a wounded animal. I had a wolf within—an anger that was stealing my peace.”

One day, while listening to the Gospel of forgiveness, she felt something break within her. It was not sentimentality; it was a deep certainty that God was asking her to surrender a resentment that was consuming her. She fell to her knees and wept for a long time—not out of weakness, but because she realized that hatred had chained her to her own pain.

That day did not change everything at once, but it began a journey. In time, when she met the murderer again, she could look at him without vengeance in her eyes. She did not forget what had happened. She did not justify anything. But she stopped being a prisoner of the wolf within.

A priest who accompanied her said:
“In that woman I saw the wolf lie down with the lamb… inside the same heart.”

This is what Isaiah announces.
This is what God does.
This is what we celebrate in Advent: the impossible peace that grows from a dry stump.

And today’s Gospel completes the message:
“I praise you, Father, because you have revealed these things to the little ones.”

To welcome God’s impossibilities, we do not need to understand everything. We need to believe like Mary, trust like Abraham, and open our hearts like the humble and the simple.

Brothers and sisters, the same God of Abraham, of Mary, and of Isaiah is still acting today.
He continues making possible the things you have already declared lost.
He continues bringing life where you see only a stump.
He continues letting peace take root where you see only impossibility.

Advent is an invitation to look again,
to not give up,
to believe that God can… even where we no longer can.

Because for God nothing is impossible.
And where He enters, a new shoot always begins to grow.