We all have those times in our life, where we are pressed to rethink our surroundings, affiliations, relationships and even ourselves. It's a good thing. It's even healthy. The one thing that is consistent in this life is change. And many times, we are the better for it.

There is something unprecedented however about how God brings about change. What God did on that faithful night that Jesus, was born was beyond change,.. it was,... new.

In the Old Testament of the bible we encounter the tellings of several prophets. One of them was Isaiah. Isaiah has some of the most beautiful and most quoted prophesies of the coming of Christ. There is one scripture however that I believe is so subtle, and yet so refreshing. It reads:

"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. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness,  rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,  the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise." - Isaiah 43:18-21

 

The people to whom Isaiah would have been addressing, or professing to, more than likely would have known about the Lord delivering the children of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh in Egypt. They would have known well that God had made a way, out of no way, to both free them and to part the Red Sea for them...

Yet and still he says that He is about to do a new thing.

The thing that He is referring to is a new thing indeed. He is foretelling of the Lord Jesus, coming into this world... The One who is called the Living Water. Moreover He is addressing not only those who have seen his deliverance from Egypt, or who walked through dry land in the middle of the Red Sea...

No, No,... this passage is addressed "to my chosen people,  the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise." This reference makes me think about a passage that addresses believers in the New Testament, Ephesians 1:4-6. It reads:

" even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."

 

How wonderful is our God, that He would assure us of the newness, of the security, of the confidence we have in Jesus?

This Advent season, My prayer is that we would live out our days this Christmas season in expectation.

This is, an expectation that the Lord God is not a stagnant God. He is not one that is incapable of catching us by surprise in the way that He chooses to deliver us, nor in the ways that He allows us to delight in him in each moment, each holiday season. Let's pray that He would allow for us to treasure him in new ways.

Sincerely,

Erika,

Of Ashes and Beauty