Something Old, Something New (Friday Devotional)

“Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick; ‘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 43:16-19

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how God’s people reacted when they heard the proclamation you just read. The comfortable—the rich, the influential, the pious—nervously wondered whether this “new thing” would threaten their standing. They had prospered under the old way of doing things; why was God making a change now? On the other end of the spectrum, the uncomfortable—the poor, the oppressed, the abandoned—eagerly awaited whatever God was about to do. “The former things” and the “things of old” had done little to lift them up, so perhaps now God would give them reason to hope.

Any time something new is on the horizon, these are the dueling perspectives. Those who have benefitted from the old ways see no reason for a change and are suspicious of the implicit threat that newness brings. Those who have suffered under the old ways, who have longed for and even demanded change, see newness as a panacea. This dichotomy plays out all over the landscapes of life, from where you live to what you do to who you vote for—when you’re happy, you don’t want anything to change; when you’re unhappy, you want everything to change.

When God spoke to His people promising something new—a promise that would be fulfilled with the death and resurrection of Christ—He first recounted what He had done for them in ‘the good old days.’ When their ancestors had left Egypt, God had parted the sea for them, and when they had been pursued by Pharaoh’s army, He had used those same waters to save His people. But now a new day was coming, a day when God would act as deliverer and redeemer once again, but in a different way.

“I am about to do a new thing”—what the people likely focused on was the question of what that new thing would look like, what it might mean, whether they should fear it or embrace it. Perhaps more attention should have been paid to who was bringing it about. The people could trust whatever was to come, not because it was new, but because it was God’s.

As we commemorate and celebrate the new thing God did, sending His Son to die on the cross for the sins of humanity and then raising him in glory, we would do well to remember that lesson. Hope is found not in the old or the new, but in the God who was and is and is to come. So instead of placing your faith in the comfortable past or the exciting future, trust in the one who holds both in His hands.