I had an email from someone yesterday. It was one of those affirming, appreciative, encouraging surprises in the inbox, intended to make you feel better, more hopeful, and know you are valued. In this case the person assured me of their prayers, and they sent a biblical text they thought was 'just meant' for me.
The text was "Behold I make all things new...", and is from Revelation 21.5. It comes at the end of the most spectacular imaginative writing in the entire New Testament. Like much in that book, this text is freighted with meanings from the Old Testament, especially Isaiah 43.18-19:
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
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."
Throughout my life as a Christian, over 50 years now, I have turned to the later chapters of Isaiah at times when hope was hard to come by and life seemed to be asking more than can be given. Isaiah couldn't be further removed from pop psychology, life and self-management, and the always look on the bright side way of coping.
So when Isaiah says God says, "Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing", this is neither command nor permission to relinquish our sorrows, erase sad memories, or try to disguise the wounds. God promises to make a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. The new thing doesn't obliterate the past, it redeems it, transforms it, turns aridity to fruitfulness, irrigates the places where nothing has grown for years. Wilderness is land, waste places have potential, all they need is water, and that's what God promises.
In that sense Isaiah was sending to the exiles a surprise in the inbox. A promise that all that seems wasted can be gathered up again into a future fruitfulness. The tears will remain shed, and more will come; the wounds will take a long time healing, and will leave scars. But out of all the suffering God brings new possibilities, there can be streams in the wasteland, and a way through what seems like endless and life-denying desert.
That email yesterday came at the end of a long day. It included an early morning cycle run, a walk to the local farmer's market just re-opened after 4 months, and later a 3 hour forest walk enjoying the peace and invitation of a forest still dripping after earlier rain. Like everyone else I have found these past months difficult, tricky to navigate, at times seemingly unending in the slow blurring of days and timelines, and at times lonely when missing all those in whose lives we are invested, and whose friendship is an investment in us. So a walk in a forest gives time to think, to pray, to look and see, to listen to outer sounds and inner thoughts.
Walking behind the other two for a while, looking at leaves dripping water, listening to ditches gurgling, examining flowers closely, there was a complete sense of Cat Stevens! "Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden, sprung in completeness, where his feet passed."
We came back, had a replenishing meal, watched an old film, and I came up to the study, to find a text sent earlier that day, "Behold I make all things new.", and the inexplicable hunch, that such a text "was meant".
I started this series "Photos in a Time of Pandemic", as a way of reflecting on photos I had taken in the first two months of lock down. Now I've caught up with myself, and where events now are. Whatever these next months bring, it is impossible for us to forget the impact of a pandemic on our world, our country and our own small world of family, friends, church, work and all that we used to call normal. I have no idea what a text that says, "Behold I make all things new" will mean for all of us. But like so much in the life of faith, I don't need to know what will be what. More important to know that God will be there as well as here, then as well as now. And whatever blessing God brings, it will come as streams in the wasteland - that is, our past experience is not erased, it becomes a source of fruitfulness; and it will come as a way in the wilderness - that is, our future experience will be a way forward, following the one who is going before, and who makes all things new.
At least that is my attempt at trying to make some sense, and some faithful response to a promise that comes out of the blue, "Behold I make all things new." Now and again, there is a surprise in the inbox, a reminder from God knows where, that we are part of something vaster than we know, and pulled into purposes that spring, as we will eventually see, from the eternal Yes of God to his whole creation. "Behold I make all things new."
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