Do you not perceive it?

A reflection from National Pastor Jean-Daniel Ó Donncada

‘’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?’’ Isaiah 43:18-19

It is a bold prophetic act to tell people in exile to not dwell on the past, to not think about how the good old days were so much better. Nostalgia can be deceiving. The primary sources historians unearth from the past show clearly that rosy views of how perfect things used to be are usually selective memory at best. But for the people to who Isaiah prophesied, well, they may have been a genuine exception, truly people for whom the past had been better. 

But, so what? 

Does it matter if our dwelling on the past is a happy nostalgia or lamenting sadness? Both ultimately distract us from what Isaiah hears the Lord calling us to do: SEE! See what is happening now. I am doing a new thing. God’s question to the people to whom Isaiah spoke may still hold for us, do we not perceive it? 

As a Broadway fan, this Bible passage makes me think of Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics: "Something is stirring / Shifting ground / It's just begun / Edges are blurring / All around / And yesterday is done."

In defence of past-dwellers, and I confess this is a self-defence, it is only by being attentive to and rooted in the past that we can notice what even is new. And that to me is a key. Do we use our knowledge of the way things were to dwell there, or to perceive?

Isaiah commands us, SEE! Sondheim’s lyrics express a similar need to pay attention: ‘’Feel the flow / Hear what’s happening.’’

I have been just a week in my new role as your regional minister. It is humbling and awe inspiring. I am spending all my waking hours reading, listening, meeting with people. I am trying to see, trying to feel the flow, trying to hear. 

The snow in front of my home in Montréal is melting, some of your springs are ahead of mine and some are behind, but the changes are coming to us all. Spring is coming, a season of new life. We are emerging from the unstable years of the pandemic into a future only God sees fully, but that we are nonetheless invited, called, expected to see with God, maybe through a glass darkly, as Saint Paul says, but nonetheless to see, together.

Next in the Sondheim song, the lyrics say, ‘’We're what's happening / Don’t you know? / We're the movers and we're the shapers.’’ Now, I take some objection to taking too much human credit, definitely personally and still even collectively, for what God is doing among disciples in Canada. I think there is something holy in paying attention, to using all we have to perceive what God is doing apart from us. But that theological humility, well-intentioned though it may be, can distract us from how God is doing holy work in Canada: through one another. Do we see how our neighbours are loving one another? Do we see our siblings in the family of God feed, clothe, and console one another? Do we see how our older folks share wisdom and how our younger folks share passion, and are we open to the ways our older folks show passion and our younger folks show wisdom? Do we see what God is calling us to do? Do we at least perceive where God is acting to renew our church life? 

I am trying to pay attention. That is my first priority in this ministry. I look forward to meeting you all and seeing and hearing all God is doing in your communities. As for me and my house, we are still in living in the dirty snow Lent of Montréal in March, but there are signs God is doing new things, Easter and Spring are coming, (pre-emptive?) Hallelujah. God bless us to perceive it as it arrives.