Listen

Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history. Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness.

Isaiah 43:18-19

Think

Don’t ponder ancient history?!

Ummm, I teach Social Studies.

History can feel impenetrable at times. We can feel bewildered by the ancient past or fossilized by our own yesterdays. Both with reverence and with new lenses of justice and grace, we remember worlds past and our own past. Sometimes we want to cling to our histories as comfort. Sometimes we want to flee from them or need to reject them.

The author of Isaiah proclaims that God is dynamically at work, challenging us that we cannot become stuck in that complex remembering and instead are called to recognize God at work now!

God is sprouting new roots of justice, mercy, and love around ruins and emerging through the parched earth of our lives, forging new pathways in the seemingly impenetrable desert challenges of our lives and world.

The easiest way to recognize or understand is to participate. (It’s certainly how I try to teach Social Studies classes with lots of open-ended discussions!) So what justice, mercy, and love will each of us sprout for another today?

Molly Logan

Pray

Thank you knowing my history, God, and always being alongside of me.

Help me to recognize your work in our world today, whether today is feeling ruinous and parched or encouraging and refreshing in my world.

Help me receive that fresh start you offer and create and recreate in your grace today, knowing that you’ll be alongside of me as I make history today, too.

Amen.

Go

Certainly the faithful love of the Lord hasn’t ended; certainly God’s compassion isn’t through! They are renewed every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

Whether it’s morning or evening in your day, God’s grace is dawning.

May you be renewed by that fresh start and choose to live out that compassion.