Isaiah 43:14-21
I am so grateful to God for meeting me and forming this new discipline. As I met with God to discover this text and worship in prayer, he inspired me to all kinds of fantastic wisdom and joys through meditation, frankness, peace, and power.
Its amazing that this new turn of events in my personal devotional time coincided with the lectionary's emphasis on new beginnings. Isaiah reminds us of the fact that God is doing something NEW. In fact, God is eternal and infinite, so he is ALWAYS doing something NEW. Every moment is both old and new to God, who is outside time and yet created it and acts through it. His manner of redemption, constantly saving his people from dark powers (sin, death, evil, slavery, injustice) and bringing them to a Promised Land of joyful life (salvation, wholeness, liberation, freedom, deliverance), repeats itself endlessly in the lives of his followers. How is God doing something new in our lives? How is he creating the space for redemption and deliverance?
Its important to remember that while those who love God will be saved, others will choose other options, leading to destruction. In this passage, the Babylonians and the Egyptians are symbols for the fall of those who do not live out of love for God and enslave and persecute their neighbors.
Also significant is that it is those who live in the desert and are not usually the most pleasant of characters who honor God for his gifts of life. How often we expect these carrion-eaters and rough-looking individuals to be those God punishes, rather than those God lifts up.
It is a time for new things! Seek him and let go of the past. He will make a path through the wilderness to the living streams.
Do we accept the invitation to begin anew, or do we want to remain as we are?
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