BY DUANE COVRIG

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beasts of the field shall honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people which I formed for myself, that they might set forth my praise" (Isa. 43:18-21, ASV).

HAT'S ONE OF MY TOP THREE favorite passages in the Bible--for several reasons:

First, it comes from my favorite book. I've always found Isaiah's prose liberating, a literary joy for me to read. It transports me from the boring, mundane sentences that plague our daily syntax to a divine cadence that is hopeful, poetic, liberating.

Second, the passage has challenged me to move beyond my mistakes and even my "OK" days to imagine even better days. Those who know me well know that I struggle with a deep negativity. It's the meaning of my name--the Old English Celtic word Duane means darkness, coldness. It's been the struggle of my life to "remember not," to "ruminate not," to "fixate not" on the negative, but rather on the better days. I've noticed that many who grew up mesmerized by end-time persecutions and angry mobs can't imagine that better days await us, not only in heaven but also on earth. We can't imagine that God's will can happen here--among us!

Third, the image of rivers in deserts has become a great metaphor of rekindled hope. This passage tries to unbalance us from our rutted mind-set and place us where our eyes are flushed with new images of rivers in deserts, of animals thriving where they should die.

And finally, this text reminds us that God is not only faithful but also spontaneous and creative. He has shown that He can make a Garden of Eden out of that which is without form and void. He is and will always be able to create. He is especially able to make the dry and barren places flow. This is foremost a text about God and who He is and how we know Him by the way He acts.

God's Creativity
Who is God? That's a question for all of us, and one implied in verse 19. It's a partly probing question, partly rhetorical question. Can you figure it out? It mounts an attack on our preconceived notions, our limited views of the power of God. Can we keep alive a belief that will allow God the creative power of which He is capable?

God creates, maybe not right now or not in the way we think He will, or maybe not even in the way He has done it in the past. He does new things. He comes up with totally novel and (to our eyes) even absurd things, especially in desert situations. How can we identify His fingerprints, His leading, His creative way in our parched lives?

I love the suspense. We don't know. He doesn't tell us directly, but the results show His presence. The animals thriving where they once died shows the power of God to create. Where? In the desert. Not in the lush fertile lands, not by the wonderful placid lakes, not by the babbling brooks. No. Go look. He is in the parched deserts. His water flows under the surface and comes through to give life to those who need it, want it, look for it. He is with His desert dwellers to give them their drink and food in due season.

This is an energizing passage for those of us who have entered a new millennium, a new era, with bigger fears and widespread threats of both atomic weapons and religious fanatics. However, where sin abounds, grace abounds more, and this Isaiah passage has become a sustaining force to me and a promise I claim for my family and friends, my local church and denomination, and my country and world.

To Remember or Forget?
I have often heard people repeat the classic Ellen White phrase "We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history" (Life Sketches, p. 196). Isaiah 43 and White's admonition appear at odds with each other. One tells us to forget, the other to not forget. What are we to do?

There are many apparent dichotomies in the Christian walk and in the Bible. For example, many times Jesus talks about the peace He brings, only to also remind us that He does not bring peace, but a sword. Dichotomies are just opportunities to dig deeper and find a way to relate apparently contradictory passages to one main theme. Dichotomies will be with us all our lives as we grow in grace and let God nuance our thinking.

So, given the present dichotomy, what are we to do--remember or forget? I think the short answer is: It depends on what you are thinking about. There are clearly some things we should rehearse from our past and some things that we should get over. The challenge is to figure out which are which.

I've come to the painful realization that thoughts, like seeds, bear fruit in voice and action. One way to determine whether you should be forgetting or remembering is to ask, "Are my memories creating rivers or deserts for myself and for those around me?" If my thoughts and the meditations of my heart are not bringing healing and hope, I need to come up with better thoughts by going back to the Word and to God in prayer.

The context of Isaiah 43 provides answers about what we should forget. The first five verses tell us: Do not fear. Fear is a mental experience that cripples and prevents us from imagining God's creative power. Ruminating on past and present sins, abuses, and negatives keeps us in the desert, parched with anxiety. Our love for God becomes distorted by deep apprehension. By fondling fears, we limit the God who can and will always be able to create novel solutions to deep and pervasive problems.

We are called not to fear but to claim God's promises for ourselves and our children. God has given us a spirit of empowerment, of deep love and trust, and of a disciplined and sound mind that knows accurately the way of God in the world (2 Tim. 1:7).

Isaiah 43 has pushed me to look past my fears, past the pressing realities of my desert places, to see a God who is working in our world. It has forced me to reexamine the past for grace and not for fear.

Another thing worth forgetting is our differences. This is outlined in verses 5 through 10. It outlines the artificial distances that have been placed between God's children. It presents a promise of God gathering His children. It's the great promise of community.

Distorted Vision
This image of gathering and community raises memories of a time when God purposely scattered people. Genesis 11 recounts the story of the Tower of Babel, when God confused the language of the people so they could not finish their project. Should we forget the way He scattered and now suddenly view Him as the one who is in the gathering business?

I believe the difference lies in what they were doing. The Tower of Babel was a community based on fear. They'd rejected the rainbow promise given to Noah, had grown to despise it as wimpy. Now taking things into their own hands, to protect themselves, they started to build what they regarded as a waterproof, flood-proof fortress.

But it would have been a monument of fear, a grand statement that the God of heaven doesn't, or can't, or won't, keep His promises. It would have been a slap in the face of God.

So God scattered them, knowing that such a unified vision of distrust would only cripple the human race. They'd have created and sustained a community of fear, which would have worked not only to alienate them further from God, the promise giver, but also to kill one another. The only way to live at peace with one another is to believe and cling to the reality of a throne of grace.

God now works to regather His people around better promises--promises built on hope and good news. Of the many vivid examples of such regatherings, the most spectacular was the day of Pentecost, and it's one of the memories Isaiah 43 tells us to keep alive--God gathering us around better promises. Forget the Tower of Babel. Forget the differences. Remember our common ground of clinging to the promises of Christ.

When We're Desperate
Many other things about remembering and forgetting are in Isaiah 43. However, I end with a story that has helped me understand the chapter's core--about a God who comes to desert dwellers with rivers of water, a story that vividly illustrates what to forget and what to remember.

It's the story of the Syrophenician. Mark 7:25-30 portrays this distraught woman whose daughter needed healing, needed "desert intervention." But she had many things working against her.
First, she was a woman in a man's world. Surely God would be listening to powerful men and not to such a tired soul. All she had working for her was need. She was a parched character, without a chance of getting a cup of cold mercy in a world of dry wind and blowing sand.

With only a whimper of hope, she'd left the only thing she loved in the world--her child--to take a chance that this might be the God she'd known to exist. But her will was strong, a force determined to find a river in the desert.

And she had one more thing working against her: she was a Gentile--not a good thing to be when you break into a crowd of Jews following a Jewish Rabbi. What does a rabbi have to do with Gentiles--religious outcasts, unclean people? There was every reminder of her doglike status.

From Parched to Drenched
What a scene: a woman in a man's world, a caregiver with the anxieties of the world splattered all over her, a religious outcast, looking to see if Jesus cared. It was a desert. Her soul was dry, and about to get drier. The disciples met her with scorn. And if that wasn't enough, the God on whom she pinned her hope opened His mouth with words that might have pressed her even lower: "It is not lawful to give the children's food to dogs."

She knew He was speaking to her. Should she have said, "Sorry to bother You. Yes, You're right; I am a dog. Sorry to upset Your nice little religious program. I will let You get back to Your religious activities"?

She might have, but she didn't. Capturing the truth of Isaiah 43, she clung to what she'd learned in her nights and days of caregiving. Understanding Jesus to be restating a common Jewish belief, she could see past His apparent dismissal to the core character of God. She looked past the misuse of the Isaiah text to the reality that God would take care of even dogs. She saw that a river was even then springing forth in her desert.

Behold the goodness of God, which flows from His good character. He can't but act in goodness. In a world that presses out false religious claims against us, the God of the helpless speaks. A derided and dejected Syrophenician woman had wrestled with God and humanity and, like Jacob of old, had prevailed.

Our need is the only claim required for God to act. Deserts need water. God makes rivers.

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Duane Covrig teaches graduate education courses at the University of Akron and worships with fellow believers at the Seventh-day Adventist church in Canton, Ohio.