With You in the Both
We like to think that new is good, but I’m actually starting to believe the more accurate description is that new is hard.
I sat on the floor next to my friend Sheila this morning, playing blocks and cars with our favorite two-and-a-half-year-old named Ellie. We were gathered at Ellie’s house with a few other friends because Ellie and her parents were moving away this morning and we needed to see them out. We needed to honor them, and pray for them, and play with them, and not cry too much over them because we’re all still a little pretending that they aren’t really moving.
Ellie was busy rolling around on the floor and playing a fake piano when Sheila leaned over and asked, “So what’s that on your wrist?”
I flipped my left wrist over and looked at the delicate gray script scribbled just above my Apple watch. “It’s Isaiah 43,” I said.
“Oh! I don’t think I know what that is,” Sheila replied. “What does it say?”
I went on to tell her that it’s my favorite verse in the Bible — a whole chapter devoted to God’s grace and the newness that he brings.
Isaiah was a prophet to Judah during the Babylonian exile. God commissioned him to bring a message of hope right alongside a warning of judgement to the Israelites living in Babylon at the time. In chapter 43, Isaiah opens his message by telling the Israelites not to fear because God was with them:
...When you go through deep waters,
I will be with you.
When you go through rivers of difficulty,
you will not drown.
When you walk through the fire of oppression,
you will not be burned up;
the flames will not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior….
God then goes on to remind the people of Israel of all the things he’s done for them — giving Egypt, Ethiopia and Seba in their place, making a dry pathway through the waters for them to walk through to escape from Egypt and taking care of the Egyptian army as they came at them in hot pursuit.
But forget all that, [God says],
it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
The wild animals in the fields will thank me,
the jackals and owls, too,
for giving them water in the desert.
Yes, I’ll make rivers in the dry wasteland
so my chosen people can be refreshed.
I may as well just end the post right here because those verses are really all you need to know. God is doing something new. His mercies are new every morning. But that doesn’t mean the new is always good, at least not in the way we understand good.
After playing with Ellie for a few hours, drinking mimosas, taking lots of pictures and giving lots of hugs, Dan and I rode home in an Uber with a box full of groceries from our friend’s cleaned-out fridge.
I stared out the window trying to decipher how I felt. Two weeks ago, my spiritual director, Joan, said to me, “Grief and gratitude often go hand in hand.”
I believe her. I’m just not at the gratitude part yet. I’ve tried to be, but that car ride today reminded me of the importance of being present in whatever emotional state or season you are in, and I am in grief.
It’s a milder form of grief than I’ve experienced in the past, but it’s grief none the less. It’s letting go of something that I’d really not let go of, but if I never let go, I can’t be open to the new— even if that new is the joy of a long distance friendship.
Alright, God. I said silently in my heart. What is the new thing? I’m ready for the new thing.
Dan and I both moved to Chicago (separately) two years after we had each graduated from college. He’s lived here for 9 years, I’ve lived here for 7. We both love where we live, and plan to be here for the long haul. But for the last three years it seems like many of the things that make us love living here are the very things that keep getting stripped away — friendships, churches, dreams, etc…
Alright, God. I’m ready for the new thing.
I have to wonder if maybe there’s a reason God lists out all his credentials before he gets to the something new in the book of Isaish. Perhaps the something new is the knowledge that he’s with you in the water and he’s with you through fire. He’s with you in the letting go of something old and the coming of something new. He’s with you in the joy, he’s with you in the pain; in the grief and in the gratitude.
God is with you in the both.