Look back but don’t remember
By Dean Collins
Some of us, due to age, busyness, or both, have trouble remembering the conversation of an hour ago but can recall one from 25 years earlier. Some of this can be explained by selective memory. Psychologists tell us we may block certain experiences from our memory as a way to protect us from the pain of the experience. The opposite is also true; we may choose to remember emotionally charged situations while forgetting the peripheral context of those same memories.
Sometimes we are also guilty of what I will call convenient memory. I may intentionally forget that my wife asked me to take the trash out this morning and remember I will play golf at about that time. Memory is a fascinating function of our brains. It can serve to help us, and at times it can also bring back old pain.
Guidance to remember . . . and forget
Isaiah 43 opens with the guidance to remember. Specifically Isaiah speaks to those in Babylonian captivity and says remember that God created you, redeemed you, named you, and claimed you. The following verses would surely stir memories of the stories of deliverance Judah had learned from their ancestors. Memories of Passover celebrations would be resurrected just with the phrase, “For I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your savior.” Why did God deliver Israel centuries earlier? He did it because Israel was precious in his sight. Now in Babylonian captivity the prophet speaks words of hope: “Fear not, for I am with you”.
The people of God may have felt stuck in judgment because of their captivity. Isaiah starts by saying, “But now.” Something is about to change. There was the ancient past of Egypt and the current moment of Babylonian exile, “but now” God is bringing hope.
As Isaiah continues, he gives what appears to be confusing or contradictory instruction.
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.” Isaiah went down memory lane, all the way back to Egypt, and then he suddenly pivots. Don’t look back at the older works of God, he says. Look forward. Something new that is hard to perceive or understand is happening.
When God delivered Israel from Egypt, he brought the Israelites through the Red Sea unharmed while the waters destroyed their enemies in pursuit. Now this new thing would include another rescue. Israel would see their deliverance this time through the desert. Israel is promised that as they return to Jerusalem there will be rivers of provision in the desert along with protection from the dangers they would expect to encounter. God’s new thing would be the method while he consistently did his old thing of caring for and rescuing his beloved.
But this new thing looks well beyond Israel’s return from Babylon all the way to a Savior who makes all things new. The apostle Paul clearly embraced the fact that an encounter with Jesus not only provides forgiveness for sins but also makes us a new creation. Paul’s words: “The old has passed away; behold the new has come.”
In Revelation 21 Jesus, speaking to John and to us, completes this prophetic word from Isaiah when he says, “Behold, I am making all things new. The old has passed away and the new has arrived.”
Captivity was not yet over for Judah when Isaiah first made this pronouncement. But even as Isaiah spoke these words that would be recorded for all time, God had already initiated his new thing. I am sure people of faith then, just like people of faith now, have trouble understanding that God has already done the new thing, the good thing, the miraculous thing, even if we haven’t yet seen it.
The God of forward and backwards
More difficult than adjusting between time zones when we travel on earth is understanding the eternal time zone where God resides. God’s actions work forward and backwards continuously. His promises to Judah during their captivity are promises we can claim, too. The perfect work on the cross where our Savior bore the sins of humanity saves God’s children of old as it does us today and will for the next generation.
When God makes us new creations, his newness continues to work through us. Even as we experience disruption and suffering in this world, God is still doing his new thing. Healing will come. Injustice will be addressed. Suffering will end. New things happen as we receive the finished work of Christ in us. When we live as God’s witnesses doing the work he left us to do, then his goodness and even his power flow through us to activate the newness of God in any situation.
We need not fear, because we know God is always at work. We aren’t lost, because God knows our name and our place. We need not worry about what to do or where to go, because God has made a way in our wilderness. We won’t face condemnation, because God has paid the price for our sins.
We need not fear, because we know God is always at work. We aren’t lost,
because God knows our name and our place.
Yes, we can look back and remember what God has done. But we don’t need to relive our mistakes. We can look forward to the new things, even the new life, that God offers with the dawn of each new day. And when we do, we can say, “Great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see!”
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