Happy Lutheran

“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?” Isaiah 43:18-19

Many of us, I imagine, love Isaiah 43 and what it promises: God’s guidance, protection and care as the Holy Spirit leads us into new ventures.

For me, I can say that this chapter has guided me through lots of new ventures: the moves from seminary to grad school to the parish, and then into several different academic institutions; new relationships, new friendships; travel to new cities and countries; new vocational identities.

All of these experiences started with a step on a path of which I could not see the ending, ventures embarked upon knowing only that God’s hand was leading me and God’s love supporting me. In some cases, I had little else to go on, except the confidence that God was calling me to a new thing.

I find that this chapter comes to mind regularly–anytime I recognize that I am doing a significant and an important new thing, guided by the Holy Spirit. It is always reassuring to me to remind myself of God’s presence in the midst of the new and unfamiliar.

However, recently, as I was mulling over this chapter in Isaiah, the verse that I found myself reflecting on is verse 18: “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.”

Do not remember. Do not consider. What sort of advice is this, and what does it suggest about the “new thing” God is calling us into? These are genuine questions, not rhetorical ones, and, as the president of a seminary, I think they are questions that all of us in theological education are called to wrestle with in this moment.

For me, not remembering, literally understood, isn’t really an option. I mean, at some point maybe I won’t remember the past, and surely, even now I don’t remember everything accurately, but nonetheless, I cannot simply forget the former things. For example, I cannot forget Wartburg’s history, my own seminary experience at Wartburg, and my teachers, the changes and innovations we have made, and our institution’s struggles as well. Whatever “new thing” God has in store, it cannot be based on some kind of a memory wipe, as though we could excise memories like we delete files on a computer.

So, as I look to a more metaphorical interpretation of God‘s exhortation to us to “not remember,” and “not consider,” I interpret it as an invitation—maybe even a plea—to step into the future God is preparing with a clean slate, and an open mind, and a willing heart. To allow God to remove my blinders and the lenses I have constructed, in order to gaze at the landscape before me and see more clearly the opportunities and the challenges, the hopes and the dangers that present themselves.

I think the invitation is to let the future be the future, and not to impose upon it the judgments and limitations of the past. God sees more clearly than we do how poorly those past categories fit on future possibilities.

“Behold,” says our God—“I am about to do a new thing,” an act that will bring water to parched places, and green shoots in the desert. Even though it is always a little scary, ultimately, I feel blessed to be invited to participate in God’s “new” work, blessed to be a harbinger of the new life God is creating among us.