See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:19
“It’s right over there. You can’t miss it.”
Maybe it’s just me, but each time someone offers this familiar phrase, I wince. Though it’s typically delivered with a well-meaning gesture toward the “it” I “can’t miss”, the fact remains I can and do and will, on occasion, miss “it”.
A similar discomfort rises when I read the verse in Isaiah where God invites the reader to see the new thing he is doing.
That followed by God’s punchy question:
Do you not perceive it?
With robust confidence, God delivers an enthusiastic invitation to see something that is actively springing up. But straining my gaze along the long arm of God to see what he sees, my faithless response is all too often,
No, Lord. I do not see it.
What I do see is chaos, division, splintered families, hurricanes, fires and floods.
I see masked people scattered about a room so as not to catch anything untoward from one another.
Having just moved with my husband from our two-story house of 21 years (where we raised our 4 children) to an apartment with a third the space, I see…boxes.
Everywhere!
(What I long to see is the hot pad for coffee that belongs on my writing desk. In all the unboxing, that critical item has yet to show up).
But what I should see in all those boxes is evidence of God’s provision, the assurance of new beginnings springing up all around.
That to which I’ve given my heart enables me to see what God is prompting me to see. So if my heart isn’t right, neither is my vision.
In close proximity to Jericho, a city tightly shut up because of the Israelites, God urged Joshua to see.
See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. Joshua 6:2 (NIV)
Though the literal deliverance of Jericho had not yet occurred, God invited his people to keep their heart vision fixed on the assurance of his faithfulness to deliver the fortified city into their hands.
I don’t have to see with physical eyes to believe God is up to something good. I don’t have to see evidence that the fulfillment of his purposes are springing up to trust he is actively working.
Because when God says, ‘See, it’s right there. You can’t miss it’, I know it will come to pass.
When has God invited you to see a new thing or answer to prayer before he delivered it?
Mary
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