“Behold I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43:19)
One of my favourite Scripture passages is Isaiah 43, verse 19. “Behold I am doing a new thing says the Lord; even now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?”
It reminds me that our God is a creator God who is always doing some “new thing!” God is engaged in a mission to love and reconcile the world. That means that we, like most of the highways I drive on these days; are always under construction! Admittedly, that doesn’t always make for an easy or comfortable ride. But that’s what it means to be engaged in a relationship with a living, engaged, creative God.
The Scriptures teach us again and again that we can’t have a relationship with God without having that relationship bring about change within us; whether as individuals, or together, corporately, as a Church. Luther wrote, “This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing; not being but becoming; not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
A mature biblical faith is a faith that is continually under construction. Fidelity to our scriptural origins demands the continued movement of God’s people in every age. The Bible chronicles the epic story of a people who struggled to do precisely that. And like our biblical forebears, we are similarly called to identify the new thing that God is doing, and then to struggle with discovering how we might help that new thing come to fuller expression.
Easter reminds us that God’s work of creating and renewing never ends, even in the face of death! Darkness and despair do not get the last word. Life and love do! “Behold I am doing a new thing says the Lord; even now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?” I hope and pray that we do, fueled and inspired by a blessed and watchful Easter!