Bible Passage: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” (Isaiah 65:17 NIV)
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 65:17-25; Genesis 1:1
There’s something about moving to a new place. A new start. A chance to be different. To live up to the ideals we hold but cannot seem to achieve.
It usually doesn’t work entirely, but the idea is enticing. Not running away, but stepping into newness.
This is how the Book of Isaiah ends.
After chapters and chapters of judgment, calls to repentance, prophecies, and warnings, Isaiah ends with a vision of all things being made new.
In the closing words of Isaiah, we are reminded of the first chapters of God’s project of humanity.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
In Isaiah’s closing words, we are told of a new heavens and a new earth.
There is such hope and joy in these words that it can hardly be expressed.
There is newness coming, newness that does not remember the past.
This is perhaps the most encouraging thing men can hear. The past does not have the final word. In fact, the past has no word at all in this new future.
The new place God is creating is the place where our new start is in His presence and through His strength. In the new heavens and earth, the things that have characterized us in the past won’t even be a distant memory. Our story will be written anew from that day on.
As we endure our days in this broken world, compounding the difficulties of fallenness with our own failures and sins, we look with expectation and hope to the future. This is not escapism.
We are not denying the real world; we are waiting and longing for the future.
This is, in fact, our truest way to think of the future. And it is a perspective that allows us to faithfully endure and work in the trials and troubles, joys and excitements of our days.
Through Isaiah, God reminds men that darkness and deportation do not have the final say. The last act of the play is not tragedy, but hope. Our future, bought by the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, is one of hope merited only by His wounds.
Our past may haunt our memories now. But in God’s program of renewal, those ghosts will be banished and their haunting forgotten forever.
Prayer: God, thank You that You have written a story with an ending that is beyond what I could have hoped for. Thank You that the days of my past do not determine the times of my future. Amen.
Reflection: What hope does it bring you to know that God is creating a new future?
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