something new
2003-10-06 : 4:08 p.m.

�Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.� � Isaiah 43.18-19

Sometimes, everything feels old. Faded. Run down. Like the whole world is waiting for something new. And sometimes, I feel like that too. Problems begin to seem self-similar, repetitive, tiresome. At some point, I begin to realize that underneath the colors of their particulars, most human problems boil down to a very few, very dull failures. Pride. Greed. Fear...that�s a big one. Fear and pride underlay every disaster, from my struggles with my finances to America�s slide into a slow war of occupation in Iraq. Fear and pride explain most of what�s gone on at my place of work in recent months. Underneath all our complicated and contemporary dramas, the problems are as old as the world. Underneath my personal dramas, too. It makes me feel old...old as pride and fear and sin.

But then I wonder if that kind of despair isn�t a part of the same old, old problem too...a sort of tragic, prideful pathos. It�s a part of the same defective attention that gives rise to fear and hopelessness. I always overlook the new thing, springing up in the middle of it all. �Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?� More often than not, I don�t. But nevertheless, there is One who is making a way in our wilderness, and rivers in the long desert of our human desolation. Will we perceive it?

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