Do You Not Perceive It?
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Behold, I am doing 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 43:19 {ESV}
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I love that you can hear a verse in the Bible—among the many found in its pages—filled with life-giving words that you have not yet heard {or at least not yet noticed} in forty-two years of living. For me recently, that verse was Isaiah 43:19… heard last week when my mom mentioned it to me in conversation. I immediately held it close to my heart, as its theme is so correlative to both what is going on physically all around me in nature, as well as what is happening emotionally and spiritually within.
The images above and below are both photographs I created, taken of a shrub and a tree {respectively} that are in my front yard… one taken almost one week before I heard the verse from Isaiah, and the other about a week after hearing it. They both seem to me a good visual representation of what this verse says, and as one shows the snow {what hopefully was Winter’s last hoorah} on a barren shrub and the other, new growth springing forth from a tree, I thought they also went well together for this verse.
In the first, bare branches cloaked in the cold snow of Winter with no apparent growth—old or new—but with the promise of the morning sun behind… to not only melt the cold snow that surrounds what seems gone, but to do its work in the branches as well… to bring new leaves out again.
In the second, there is no sun… no bright, blue, promising sky. Only a grey, almost melancholy haze. But despite that grey, there is new life bursting from each of even the tiniest of boughs.
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I love all these pictures… the verse, the shrub, the tree… my heart and life… hearts and lives of others I know. I hope for God to do a new thing in me. It is my prayer for myself, but also for those I know who are also in {or coming out of} their own personal Winter. Out of their wilderness or desert. It seems there are so many there right now.
This verse is one of hope… one that I want to be the foundation of my prayers these days, as I pray to ask for my own help and in regards to what I am praying for in the lives of others.
I do perceive a new thing. I hope you do, too.
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So true. The Words so often breathe life and hope into my own spirit. The seasons themselves are vivid testimony that not only are there seasons in our own lives, but the hope that the difficult, devastating or dreary seasons will one day end, and life and warmth and glorious sunshine will return.
waiting with hope for warm, glorious sunshine! {including the the tangible/physical sunshine, especially on this windy, cold and dreary day! what is up with that??}
Love those photos and that is one of my favorite passages of scripture. Beautiful!!!
thank you, T. as of last week, it is also one of mine.
That verse is so good. And paired with the photos it’s just beautiful. Does that mean spring is coming to your neck of the woods?! I sure hope so.
yes, heather. i think it’s here to stay!! or so i hope. i’m so sick of having the furnace on. i hope the same goes for you!