The Best Is Yet To Come

Thursday, July 26, 2018


Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash


"Remember not the events of the past, 
the things of long ago consider not;
See, I am doing something new! 
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? 
In the wilderness I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers."
-- Isaiah 43: 18-19

Oh, hi, there.

It's been a while since I've last popped into the blogosphere.

Without sharing too many personal details, I'll just say I've been in a bit of a dry and desolate season of life this summer -- the kind where I've wondered if God is really up there, listening to and answering my prayers. I show up to prayer anyway, and I keep crying out, but it's been hard to feel God's presence and hear His promises in the midst of my fear, worry, and sadness.

I usually read the epigraph at the start of this post by its last two lines: "In the wilderness I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers." And I take it to mean that God will come to me in my heartbreak and renew my spirit, causing my life to flourish in new, unthinkable ways. I understand it to mean that He won't waste my despair, and that if I surrender it to Him, He will make something wildly beautiful and unimaginable out of it. And looking back at every other time in my life when I've felt similarly despondent, I can see how, yes, everything in fact has happened for a reason, and God has worked in mysterious and incredible ways.

That's a beautiful way to read this passage, and it certainly isn't wrong. And yet, whenever I stand in the wasteland once again, I find ways to convince myself that this is the time when He won't come through.

But here's what the study note for the above passage reads in my Bible (which is the St. Benedict Press NABRE, published in 2011, for all you curious types):

"God's new act of delivering Israel from the Babylonian captivity is presented as so great a marvel as to eclipse even the memory of the exodus from Egypt."

That's right: God's latest act of deliverance is even better than the best thing that has come before.

I can't see it right now, how God will bring my trials to fruition. But His promise is pretty clear: what He does next will be better than anything He has done before.

For you, too.

Keep on hoping.

The best is yet to come.


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