“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV)
“If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, ‘If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God.’ The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’ For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”** – C. S. Lewis
“Come and look on my face. Gaze into my glory until you are transformed. I will give you new eyes, my eyes, which give you true understanding. When you look through my eyes, the world around you changes. When you see the sick, I see them healed. When you see the lost, I see them asleep and ready to be awakened. When you see darkness approaching, I see the enemy defeated. And when I look at you, I see you completed—whole, beautiful, lacking nothing.
“I call you into true vision, so that you might see. Partake of my healing eye salve, and your vision will be clear. I will heal your eyes and cause you to clearly evaluate and discern the day in which you are living. Many see doom; I see glory. Many see devastation; I see my kingdom increasing and having no end. I see the end from the beginning. When you come before my throne, you will see what my prophet Isaiah saw—the whole earth full of my glory!”* – Brian Simmons & Gretchen Rodriguez
Visionary God,
Help us to see with your eyes ourselves, the people, and the circumstances in this world. Help us to forget the form things and not dwell on the past, but SEE that you are doing a new thing. Even as the New Things spring up, help us to perceive the ways in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland that you are creating for us. Help us to see your Kingdom and the whole earth full of your glory, we ask in Jesus’s name. AMEN.
*I Hear His Whisper written by Brian Simmons and Gretchen Rodriguez
** from “Mere Christianity”, by C. S. Lewis