Something Old, something New....

I think I must have a dozen unposted blogs in draft mode right now. Ranting and raving, depressive and emotional.  It happens, but I think it's time to move on.

I think God is doing something in me. Whether it's me finally submitting to him or who even knows what. I have had this stirring in me for the past few weeks.  The first Sunday in January I heard a verse on the way to church, but I couldn't find it anywhere when I tried to look up the reference I thought I had remembered correctly. So after some searching, I let it be.

But then Anna sent me the same verse I had wanted to find through my email. Isaiah 43:18-19a

 "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 looked to the text and I read through it one morning and I found myself struck by the different understanding I saw in it, as it applied to my life.  I would have imagined that I need to forget my sin, move on and be a better person. you know, the main interpretation. But that's not what struck my heart.


I thought about how much I dwell on the past, not that I relive my mistakes and fret over them, but that I remember the good times, and so often I long to go back to the day when.... fill in the blank, but I think mostly I was thinking about the days when my relationship with God seemed easier,when these doubts didn't invade my mind. When I wanted to worship God and it wasn't a sacrifice on my part. When I wanted to live radically. I was missing the person I used to be, and I was sad when I thought about going back to Bethel, about how it can never be the same again and I will never be who I was. I felt broken because I changed.

And it dawned on me when I read this verse that this was, plain and simply, me continuing to dwell on the past.  It doesn't have to be bad for me to dwell on it. And I need to let it go. I need to forget who I was so God can do something new in me, I need to forget the way things were so God can do something new in my life.


I don't know that what he is doing will be comfortable or that it will meet my still skewed expectations. God never promised me comfort. But what I do know is that my instistence upon the way things were, has been and is preventing me from living the life God has for me. 

I don't have to be the same or go back to what I used to be. God is doing something new in me.