Dusting off the past

It was definitely the stereotyped antiques/second-hand store. Dust coated the cluttered stacks of knickknacks, old kitchen items, antlers, music instruments, magazines and books, records, tables, rusted wood stoves, souvenirs…and more hung from the ceiling. You had to watch your step to keep from stumbling in the narrow aisles while the store’s “watch cats” slithered here and there.


“I’d call that a museum without the admission price,” my husband said as we finished our wide-eyed browsing. “One other impression,” he added. “The prices he put on things told me he loved his stuff more than he wanted to sell it.”

The owner didn’t get a dime out of us. But the owner did give me something—and that was a reminder of our human tendency to hoard. Besides “things,” we hang onto memories that have outlived their usefulness.

I think that is what God was addressing in an admonition tucked into Isaiah 43. As the chapter begins, He tenderly reminds the Israelites that He who created, formed, redeemed, and called by name will protect them in the difficult times ahead (the “floods” and “fires” in v. 2).

He can make that claim because He is…God: “I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior” (v. 11). They only had to think back a few centuries to the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, freeing them from enslavement in Egypt. Yet as fantastic as that was, God told them to look ahead, not back:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. (vv. 18-19)

Through Isaiah, God was urging His people to look beyond their current negatives, which would lead to captivity in Babylon. Someday, they would return—as they did in small numbers later. But as true with many prophecies, there is a "forward look" to a time in the renewed earth when wastelands and deserts will have plenty of water (v. 20). God’s gifts of refreshment will cause His children to praise His name (v. 21).

I have occasionally shared verses 18-19 with people going through the death of a loved one, relationship, or dream. We have a tendency to romanticize the past to get us through a less-than-pleasant present. But God says the old parts of our lives, even if they had good in them, are not to be dwelt upon to the exclusion of new things God wants to do in our lives. The "old" become like dusty, chipped dishes and deer antlers in a junky “antique” store. He has better.

In applying that counsel, I’ve needed to think twice in re-telling some of the “glory stories” of God’s work in my life from decades ago. If I don’t give equal or more time to the newer stories of my spiritual journey, I’m essentially saying God took a break—and that’s not true at all! Sometimes He works with breathtaking miracles, other times through quiet but essential changes in my heart.That’s part of my ongoing testimony, too.

No matter where we are, God has better things ahead—things that will bring Him praise. Things that refresh, like water in a desert. New things, that in His wisdom and power He can bring about. We’re to be living with anticipation for fresh workings of God, not muddled in dusty memories.