After our first son was born, my wife Miska and I entered a rough stretch in our marriage. We had been extremely close, but now another little person interrupted all that. We loved Wyatt very much, but our relational dynamic had changed forever. Selfishly, I kept insisting that our marriage get back to the way it was before the upheaval. One day, amid a fight, Miska said, “Winn, you are going to have to stop insisting our marriage be what it was. It will be good again, but it will be different.”
Isaiah wrote to the people of Judah prior to their Babylonian exile. He reminded them of how God miraculously rescued them generations earlier during their Egyptian exile. He recounted how God was the one who “opened a way through the waters” and made a “dry path through the sea” (Isaiah 43:16). The Exodus story, Moses going toe-to-toe with Pharaoh, plagues raining down, and the people crossing the Red Sea on dry ground had been their defining marker of God’s power and goodwill toward them.
So, in the face of their prophesied future exile, some of God’s people may have assumed that God intended to send another prophet and another battery of stunning plagues, another miraculous trek across a sea to deliver them. They may have expected God to act in a certain way. Maybe others, when they heard Isaiah’s words, felt cynical. We’ve heard these stories before, for hundreds of years. But nothing is going to change.
Either way, the people had to let go of what they were holding so tightly (either their cynical doubts or their ideas of how God would act). They had to forget what they thought they knew so they could receive the new thing God wanted to do. As novelist L. P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
More:
• 2 Corinthians 5:17
• Jeremiah 14:7
• Jeremiah 31:22
Next:
How are you cynical toward God’s promises or locked in your view of how God should care for you? What “new thing” do you think God may be wanting to do in or for you?
sowharvest on January 1, 2011 at 1:58 pm
What an on time & on point message. Having read and remembered v. 18-19 so many times it was refreshing to hear on this day. WHY? Because with the new year lies many unknown days ahead. However if we just don’t dwell on what has happened yet and TRUST GOD then we will understand that often the “new thing” HE is doing is us– is growing us & purifying us so that we can TRUST HIM even when things may never be the way they were. BUt GOD will always “work them for our good and His glory”. So embrace the “new thing” because the LORD Jesus will never inflict pain HE Loves us. Praise be to GOD. Thank you Winn for a timely message as we start this year anew. May GOD bless your family and your ministry.
winn collier on January 1, 2011 at 2:46 pm
thank you, sowharvest. peace to you and yours as well.