Hi there, and welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading, titled Beauty and Place of Soil, was written by Katara Patton.

One evening, I noticed neat rows of soil in a vacant lot near my home.

Each row contained small green leaves with tiny buds peeking out.

The next morning, I stopped in my tracks when I saw a patch of beautiful red tulips sprouting

in the lot.

The previous fall, a group had planted 100,000 bulbs in empty lots throughout the south side of Chicago.

They chose red to symbolize how redlining, lending discrimination by banks, had impacted neighborhoods where primarily minorities lived.

The tulips symbolized the houses that could have been in those lots.

God's people have endured many challenges from being exiled from their homelands to discrimination like redlining.

Yet, we can still find hope.

Isaiah reminds Israel during a time of exile that God would not leave them.

He'd give them a crown of beauty and place of them. He'd give them a crown of beauty in place of ashes.

Even the poor would receive good news.

God promised to exchange despairing spirits with a garment of praise.

All of these images evoke his splendor and would bring joy to the people who would now be oaks of righteousness instead of dejected exiles.

Those tulips also show that God can create splendor from dirt and discrimination.

I look forward to seeing the tulips each spring and and more importantly, renewed hope in my neighborhood

and other communities.

Today's our daily bread devotional scripture reading is from Isaiah chapter 61, verses 1 through 3.

The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good

news to the poor.

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