Isaiah 34:15-17. This passage immediately follows a description of the destruction and death that will come upon God's people on the day of his vengeance. Isaiah talks about the land being filled with corpses and soaked with their blood, then lying waste from generation to generation, with none even passing through it. But what happens next? What happens when the people have been punished, and the land has lain abandoned long enough? Eventually, God's creation moves back in. At first, it is thorns and nettles; jackals and hyenas - these come in to the ruins, to the destroyed and blood soaked land. Here, Isaiah describes owls nesting, laying eggs; hatching and gathering their young; the kites are gathered, "each with her mate. Seek and read from the book of the Lord: not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate. For the mouth of the Lord has commanded, and his spirit has gathered them... they shall possess it forever."

Creation, beauty, regeneration, it is all of God. Even when he allows his children to suffer death and destruction in order to cause them to turn back to him, he also uses the spaces we leave behind, the land that is also his creation. It may be ugly and uninhabitable for a long time, that is what we do with our sin, but eventually life will come back. Our cities, our monuments to our own hubris, will fall, but the land will will again spring forth something new, something better. In fact, in the next chapter, Isaiah describes this land as bringing forth the highway that is the path of our Savior:
 

"For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
    and streams in the desert;
 the burning sand shall become a pool,
    and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
    the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

And a highway shall be there,
    and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not pass over it,
    and fools shall not err therein."

The empty land will heal without us, and it will be home to his other creatures while we sort ourselves out. Then, when he calls us back into his new creation, along his new path, we will not find ruins inhabited by jackals and hyenas - but a New Eden, all of his creation living the way he planned. And from generation to generation we shall dwell in it!