Making All Things New!
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Fresh starts. New beginnings. Clean slates. I love these phrases and what they invoke in me. I think it’s hope. Hope that things don’t have to stay the way they are–hope in the possibility of change, of an altered course. It is one of the many reasons I love following Jesus. He is making everything new.
He says all these amazing things that remind me that every moment is pregnant with potential of new life.
“Pick up your mat and walk.”
“Go and sin no more.”
“Leave what you are doing, and follow me.”
Healing. Forgiveness. Purpose. He offers these to me every moment of every day. Even my next breath is filled with possibility. I never have to go back. I can move forward with the strength of my God, living in me.
18 “Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:18-19
My flesh beckons me to dwell in the past, “going over old history” through nostalgia, regret, un-forgiveness, or rehearsing unmet expectations in my mind. I can take myself back and live in those places, but if I dwell there, setting up a tent and making myself a cozy place to mope, I will miss what God wants to do here and now.
He says He is doing something new, something fresh, but I won’t see it if I live in the past. I won’t perceive, recognize or be aware of what He wants to do now if I refuse to let it go.
And check out where He makes this newness spring up—in the most unlikely of places—the wilderness, signifying a desolate, aimless reality—in THAT place, He will mark out a path, showing me the way. In the wasteland—the place of drought and dryness and death—in THAT place, He will bring the water of life. It reminds me of what He said to the woman at the well, “Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” (John 4:13-14, The Message)
In other words, He brings newness to the most unlikely of places, in the most extraordinary of ways.
He is making all things new.
Filled with hope,
Christy
This was originally posted in October, 2014
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