Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19
We need this verse. It is a grace boost for this time of our lives.
For our reading, we are in Isaiah. We sit in the lamplight across from each other and read two verses, by turns, a chapter each evening. This has been a huge blessing to us in our crazy changes and griefs as a couple. We had stopped having family devotions when Brad moved out. We didn’t really mean to stop having devotions, but I think we learned that we had been doing it for the children more than for ourselves all the years. Now we found out. We’re doing it for us. Anytime we have overnight company, they join us, and that’s been great, too.
Scripture is healing and filling these days? Is it my age or “what we’ve been through”? I think we all use that phrase a lot lately.”What we’ve been through.” I guess it is an admission that life happened in unexpected ways and kept happening that way until, finally… we didn’t die, at least.
So Easter came. We needed Easter this year. I say this every year. When do we not need Easter? As long as we’re here there will be hard things, I suppose. We hope in what Jesus did for us and what He continues to do. And most of all that He is coming back to get us out of this broken world and our broken selves.
I am grateful for daily routines of rest, home keeping and socializing. And for celebrations: holiday meals, birthday parties, and anniversaries of all sorts. We depend on these things because it is part of our culture. Of course these things are not the cure-all for hard stuff, only Jesus is. But I believe that these routines offer us moments within which we get our focus off of our wallows and on to what stays normal in life.
It’s comforting to sit down to the usual, beautiful china of a well-laid Easter table. All that food, rich and pretty. Comforting, because no matter what else is happening, we’re still going to celebrate Easter. Which is the answer to every brokenness and every question and every fear. Every single problem is solved by what happened with Jesus for us.
The preacher on Sunday morning encouraged us to not rush past the cross to our own righteousness to save us. To sit there and savor, for once, the facts of our salvation based on what He did. Period.
This is the way in the wilderness of our lives. It really is the only road at all. All the agonies of decision and events and brokenness-es can be dumped there.
God is asking, “Do you not see it?”
Stone House Scribblings 