A New Thing: Part 7

Gentle Reader,

Do not remember the former things
    or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
    now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.

– Isaiah 43:18-19 (NRSV)

In The Message paraphrase of the Bible, Eugene Peterson renders a line in the following way: Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?

As I write this, I am half-laying down on my couch, propped up in a pillow cocoon, pausing to take deep breaths when stomach pains hit. I could be sick with a virus. I could be sick from the chronic sickness I live with. I could be dealing with both. The pains are just sharp and consistent enough that I’m inclined to sleep them off, but just brief enough that my day hasn’t been totally derailed. This is, in my opinion, the worst kind of sick. That kind of sick, that sort of sick. Enough that you feel gross, but not enough to justify kicking back all day.

So words like alert, present, and see are tough to get a handle on today. They push on the edges of my just smudged-out brain space – imagine a child’s drawing that they deemed bad and then erased, but not enough for the picture to actually be fully gone. I’m present, but not completely. Checking off tasks on my to do list but not quite sure how I’ve actually spent the hours. Just bleh.

Remember that Isaiah is sharing God’s words of promise to people who will experience the pain of destruction and exile. These would be hard words to believe. The psychological trauma would linger in the community long past the lives of those who actually saw the Temple and Jerusalem reduced to rocks. How could anyone be alert and present, have eyes to see, the new thing that God was about to do? How could they dare to trust that their years of homelessness would come to an end?

Their tiredness went deeper than needing to get a good eight hours of shut-eye. It was a soul tiredness. A heart weariness. An anxiety and depression that kept their eyes locked onto the ground beneath their feet. Just one step at a time. Survival.

They had to learn to trust before they could be alert. And God would give them more than enough reasons to trust. They would discover that God is not confined to the Temple. God is with them in their exile. (The books of Daniel and Ezekiel especially attest to this). They suffer the consequences of their choices, but God does not abandon them. God does not withdraw God’s love.

We all get distracted by pain and suffering. It might be as small as stomach pains or as large as spousal betrayal. We focus in, laser-like, on the pain. I think God understands that. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God also knows that God is available. God is trustworthy. God invites us to shift our focus from the pain and onto God. Not as an act of denial, but as an act of faith.

May you choose to trust God today. In that trust you will find the grace to be alert, present, and to see what God will do.

GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,

MARIE

Image Courtesy of Francisco Moreno