Something New…

"See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"

* Isaiah 43:19

We often grow so familiar with our limitations and struggles that we mistake them for permanent reality, mapping our future solely by our past. Yet Isaiah's wisdom reveals a startling truth: God's new work isn't something distant or future—it's already "springing forth" in the present moment. The question isn't whether transformation is happening, but whether we can perceive it.

This is wisdom's central paradox: genuine change rarely announces itself dramatically. It emerges quietly, like a seedling rather than a thunderclap, wearing unfamiliar forms we weren't watching for. We scan the horizon for deliverance in old, expected shapes while the new thing rises unnoticed at our feet.

To perceive the new requires loosening our grip on "how things have always been." Most people grant their past veto power over their future, letting old wounds and failures foreclose new possibilities. But wisdom invites us to reverse this—to trust that God's creative impulse is more determinative than our accumulated history. The new thing springs forth precisely in places we've written off as barren, especially in landscapes we've declared finished.

The truly wise cultivate "attentive expectancy"—a wakeful posture combining patience with readiness, honoring the past without being imprisoned by it. They understand that God's new work rarely arrives labeled and announced, but often disguised in the ordinary, hidden in what we almost overlooked.

Isaiah's question—"do you not perceive it?"—invites us to a different kind of seeing: not vision that categorizes and controls, but perception humble enough to be surprised, flexible enough to be astonished, open enough to be met by grace in forms we never imagined. The new thing is always springing forth; wisdom is learning to see it.