Pant, pant…Yes, I’m a bit out of breath with this move for sure! After trying to find my notepad with the list of verses for this month, I decided to stop wasting the time. The box is somewhere…but I have no idea where!
So this month, we’ll step out of the routine just a bit. For me, I’m in the middle of a new thing that is happening in my life. Part of this passage came to mind, so I looked it up and found the context.
The context can often either throw out the “blessing” or clever application of an individual verse, or it can add dimension and encouragement to it. In this case, it did the latter!
It’s a reminder that the One who is leading and guiding us is the same One who made a way in the sea for Israel in the Exodus! What a great thing to remember. How great and faithful He has been in the past. How longsuffering and loving He has been. How often He has provided for our needs, and theirs too…whatever type they were.
BUT, we can’t rest on our laurels. We can’t take Him for granted…or think He will keep doing things the same old way! He is doing something new.
Particularly as an older person, but it is not limited to the elderly at all…we want to get in certain kinds of comfortable ruts. I see many younger people who haven’t had the experience with change that I have had. They are very locked into their particular ways of doing things…in different ways than I am maybe, but locked in just the same.
As Americans, we want our country to look the same as it always has. It doesn’t. It probably won’t ever look the way we remember it again. Maybe it never did. Are we willing to face, with excitement and challenge, the new things GOD is doing in our country? Even if they aren’t changes we love? Can we help our children look at the changes as a challenge from a Christian perspective vs. grumbling and “hating” people and governments that make choices we don’t like?
This is the GOD who promises to make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. He is doing something new in our country. Are we watching to see what it is? Or are we too busy complaining?
Are we willing to be ready for the new things He is doing in our homes and families? They don’t always look the way we want them to. Often the “new” things come with pain, sadness, sorrow and suffering. But they bring with them deeper relationships…if we allow them to. New friendships…with people we might never have known before. And a closer knowledge of Christ.
I love Joni E. Tada’s comments re her paralysis…
But many decades in a wheelchair have taught me to not segregate my Savior from the suffering he allows, as though a broken neck… merely ‘happens’ and then God shows up after the fact to wrestle something good out of it. No, the God of the bible is bigger than that. Much bigger.
And so is the capacity of your soul. Maybe this wheelchair felt like a horrible tragedy in the beginning, but I give God thanks in my wheelchair…I’m grateful for my quadriplegia. It’s a bruising of a blessing. A gift wrapped in black. It’s the shadowy companion that walks with me daily, pulling and pushing me into the arms of my Saviour. And that’s where the joy is…
This from a woman who was very athletic…and now can’t move without assistance…for the last 40+ years! When she talks about suffering, I listen!
Are we willing to be in the situation, the place, the environment this great GOD has planned for us? I love how this passage reminds us of WHO is speaking and WHAT He is able to do.
He is able to revolutionize our situation! He is able to bring glory to places that don’t seem very glorious. He is able to bring rivers to dry places. It might still be a desert…but there is water…and life there.
This is a delightful passage to memorize. Join me!
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
“Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing 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 43:16, 18-19
