Isaiah 43:18-19

“Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

There is a kind of remembering that strengthens faith, and there is a kind that quietly imprisons the soul. Scripture often calls God’s people to remember: to remember His covenant, His mercy, His deliverance, His faithfulness in generations past. But here the Lord gives a different command: “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.” He is not asking His people to deny what has happened. He is calling them away from living under its rule.

The past can govern us in more than one way. We may be held by old failures, rehearsing sins already confessed and griefs already borne. We may be held by past wounds, allowing pain to become the lens through which every new mercy is viewed with suspicion. We may even be held by former blessings, clinging so tightly to what God once did that we become slow to recognise what He is doing now. The soul can be disordered not only by regret, but by nostalgia.

God’s word through Isaiah interrupts that fixation: “Behold, I will do a new thing.” The command is not merely to stop looking back, but to look rightly at the present work of God. “Now it shall spring forth.” Not someday only. Not in some distant age beyond their imagination. Now. The Lord asks, “shall ye not know it?” There is tenderness in the question, but also a searching challenge. Are we awake enough to notice grace when it begins quietly? Are we humble enough to receive help in a form we did not expect?

Much of modern life trains us to assume that tomorrow will simply repeat yesterday. Habits harden. Expectations narrow. We begin to mistake familiarity for certainty. But God is never trapped inside the patterns we have grown used to. He is faithful to His character, but wonderfully free in His methods. He may restore what was broken, or He may lead us into something we could not have designed. He may answer with the road we asked for, or He may create a road where no road existed.

That is why the imagery matters so deeply: “I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” The wilderness is not a place of obvious abundance. It is the place where direction seems uncertain, where resources appear thin, where the soul grows tired of scanning the horizon. The desert speaks of dryness, emptiness, and exposure. Many believers know such terrain. A season may not look outwardly dramatic, yet inwardly it can feel barren: prayer without warmth, obedience without visible fruit, waiting without explanation.

God does not promise His people that they will never enter such places. He promises that He is Lord even there. A “way” in the wilderness means direction where confusion seemed final. It means movement when life felt stalled. It means that the present difficulty is not necessarily the end of the story. And “rivers in the desert” speak of provision that does more than barely sustain. Rivers bring life, refreshment, continuity, and fruitfulness. The Lord is able to nourish the soul in the very place where we assumed nothing could grow.

This is not a call to careless optimism. It is a call to ordered trust. We do not pretend the wilderness is a garden. We do not rename pain as blessing before its time. But neither do we grant the barren place final authority. The Christian soul learns to say, “This is wilderness, but God can make a way here. This is desert, but God can send rivers here.”

To receive the new thing of God, we may need to loosen our grip on old identities. We are not only what we have suffered. We are not only what we have failed to become. We are not even only what we once achieved. The Lord who has been faithful behind us is also active before us and present with us. His mercy is not exhausted by yesterday’s story.

So we ask for the grace to notice what is springing forth. A quiet conviction. A new obedience. A softened heart. A door opening where we had stopped looking. A path becoming visible one step at a time. God specialises in transformation where we least expect it. When the soul stops rehearsing the old as though it were ultimate, it becomes free to behold the living God at work again.

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