7/30/26

Day 30: The New Thing

Do Not Miss It Because You Are Looking Backward

"But forget all that — 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." — Isaiah 43:18-19 (NLT)

God said this to Israel in a remarkable moment. The 'former things' He is telling them to forget are not failures or sins — they are the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, the miraculous deliverance that had defined Israel's identity for centuries. These were the greatest moments in their history, the stories they told to their children, the evidence of God's power and faithfulness that had sustained them through generations. And God says: do not cling to those. Something new is coming that will make those look like the beginning.

This is a challenge that brokenness uniquely creates and uniquely enables. Before the breaking, we were often so invested in what we had built that we could not see what God was building. Our former things — the former ministry, the former relationship, the former identity, the former way of operating — occupied our full field of vision. We were celebrating the Exodus while God was preparing to do something that would require us to cross a different kind of wilderness entirely.

Brokenness clears the field. The crushing that felt like pure loss is also a liberation from attachment to what was, an opening of vision toward what will be. The person who has lost what they were holding most tightly is often the person best positioned to receive what God is doing next — not because suffering automatically produces receptivity, but because suffering, received rightly, can detach us from the former things enough to see the new thing.

Do you not see it? God asks. He has already begun. The new thing is not merely announced as future; it is already in motion. The pathway through the wilderness is already being cut. The rivers in the dry wasteland are already flowing underground, waiting for the moment of emergence. The question is whether our grief over the former things will keep us looking behind us long enough to miss what is already beginning at our feet.

This is not a command to be false about grief. You cannot skip from loss to hope without passing through genuine mourning. The former things deserve their grief. The Exodus genuinely was spectacular. But there comes a point in the process of brokenness where God says: enough. Do not let the memory of what was prevent the receiving of what I am about to do. The wilderness you are in is not a dead end; it is a pathway. The dry wasteland is not permanent; the rivers are already on their way.

Look around you. Look at the ground beneath your feet. Look for the first signs of green in the wilderness, the first hint of moisture in the dry places. God has already begun. The new thing is not coming; it is here, emerging. Do not miss it because you are looking backward at what burned.

Reflection: What former things are you clinging to — things God may be asking you to release so that your hands and your eyes are free for what He is already doing? Where do you see the first signs of the new thing beginning?

"God is never only working in our past. He is always doing a new thing, and the broken places are often where the new thing first appears. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon"