Everyone has problems and difficulties of one kind or another. Everyone has things in their lives that stress them out or make them anxious. What are those for you, right now? And if you had a chance to escape them for a day or two (all expenses paid, of course), where would you go? Imagine your own little haven of calm and contentment. What would it be?

There was a time in which, as a middle-class suburbanite, I used to daydream now and again of the perfect backyard retreat. I’d build a deck surrounded by trees and greenery; I’d have a comfortable chair where I could sit beneath the shade of a tree and quietly enjoy a book. Maybe there’d even be a hammock for a little late afternoon snooze?

I never built that deck. I experimented for a while sitting outside in a lawn chair to read beneath a tree. But it would take all of about three-and-a-half minutes to start being pestered by flies. It’s hard to appreciate what you’re reading when you have to keep swatting things away from your face. After a few pages, I’d give up and go back inside.

Still. There’s something about that mental image of a place of calm, a quiet retreat, that continues to attract me, to awaken a sense of longing. For you, the image might be different. Maybe it’s walking alone by the ocean, listening to the rhythm of the surf. Or sitting by a gently flowing stream in the cool mountain air. Or hiking through a forest, where a breeze rustles the leaves and you’re treated to the occasional song of a bird. Whatever it is, it’s a place to let go of your cares for a while, a place to know peace. Can you envision it?

That, I think, is the spirit in which we need to read Micah 4:4. We’ve seen how the hope-filled oracle at the beginning of the chapter, an oracle both Micah and Isaiah deliver to Judah, envisions a time in which there will be justice for all and no more need for war. Fighters will become farmers instead. And even if we’ve never experienced war personally, we can still appreciate what the oracle says next:

Everyone will sit under their own vine
    and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
    for the LORD Almighty has spoken.

Instead of being out fighting battles, people will be at home, sitting peacefully and without fear, under their own trees and vines. The fact that it’s their own vine and their own fig tree is important; remember, one of the moral outrages of Micah’s prophecy is the way the rich were stealing away the land and inheritance of the poor. The vision here is the corrective to that injustice.

Unlike the previous verses, this verse is not part of Isaiah’s prophecy. But it’s not exactly original to Micah, either. The prophet borrows from an earlier description of a time of relative peace enjoyed by God’s people during the reign of Solomon. First Kings 4:20 tells us that, under Solomon, all of God’s people ate, drank, and were happy. They were also safe, as we read in verse 25:

During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree.

Remember, too, that this was a time before the kingdom split into north and south. It’s a picture of unity and peace. Not that it lasted for very long, in reality. But the description could still stand as a picture of hope and longing even two centuries after Solomon.

What would it be like to live in a world without war? A world where all can live at peace, relaxed and unafraid? Honestly, right now, it’s a little hard to imagine. But I can catch glimpses of it here and there. It’s something to look forward to. It’s something worth waiting for. And eventually, it will be more than just a daydream, what some of his hearers may have taken as a figment of the prophet’s imagination, because the LORD Almighty has spoken.

But in the meantime, what? Do we just wait around for war to cease and peace to descend from above?

No, Micah suggests; we’ve got something to do.