Tag Archives: God’s faithfulness

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 9: Can You See It?

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Read Isaiah 43:18–19

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making everything new!’ And then he said to me, ‘Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.’” (Revelation 21:5 NLT)

Two groundhogs emerge from their burrow at dawn in a Pennsylvania landscape. Bare trees and lingering frost surround them, while tiny green shoots and warm sunlight quietly reveal that spring has already begun.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Can You See It?” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

During the last couple of years I lived in Pennsylvania, I knew spring had arrived when the groundhogs began appearing. First, I would see Mama and Papa Groundhog venturing out again. Then, later in the spring, their pups would emerge and begin exploring the world around them.

And no—they never appeared on Groundhog Day.

They followed no human calendar and waited for no ceremonial announcement. By the time I saw them, the changing season was already underway. Life had been stirring beneath the ground before any groundhog—or pastor—appeared above it.

That is the tension within God’s question through Isaiah: “I have already begun! Do you not see it?” God is not merely promising that something new will happen eventually. God declares that the new thing is already emerging, even while the wilderness still looks like a wilderness.

These words were not written by the eighth-century prophet Isaiah himself. They come from a later prophetic voice continuing in Isaiah’s tradition, speaking to the people of Judah during the Babylonian exile. Jerusalem had fallen, the Temple had been destroyed, and the people were living far from home under foreign rule. They needed more than a comforting memory of what God had once done; they needed to recognize what God was beginning to do among them now.

The exiles knew what God had done before. Their ancestors had been enslaved in Egypt, trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the sea, with no visible road to freedom. Then God divided the waters and made a way where no way appeared possible. The Exodus became the defining testimony of Israel’s deliverance—a sacred memory passed from one generation to the next.

Yet Isaiah declares, “But forget all that—it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.” God is not commanding the people to erase their history or diminish what God had done. In fact, the verses immediately preceding this passage deliberately invoke the Exodus. The past still testifies to God’s faithful character.

The warning concerns what happens when sacred memory becomes a boundary around what God may do next.

Before, God made a road through the sea. Now, God promises a road through the wilderness. Before, God divided the waters. Now, God promises to bring water into a wasteland. The landscape changes. The method changes. God’s faithfulness remains.

The people knew how to recognize the God who made a road through the sea. The question was whether they could recognize that same God making a road through unfamiliar terrain.

God declares, “I have already begun! Do you not see it?”

That question suggests something unsettling: God’s new work may already be emerging while God’s people remain unable—or unwilling—to perceive it. They may be staring toward the sea, waiting for familiar waters to divide, while life is already breaking through somewhere else.

This does not mean that everything new comes from God. Newness alone is not evidence of holiness. Not every innovation is faithful, every disruption is deliverance, or every promise of change is life-giving. Institutions can adopt new language, introduce new programs, and advertise new visions without confronting injustice, relinquishing control, or changing anything substantive.

God’s new work must be discerned according to God’s revealed character. Does it produce the fruit of the Spirit? Does it cultivate love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Does it tell the truth, practice mercy, pursue justice, extend hospitality, loosen bonds, and restore life?

Discernment protects us from two equal dangers: worshiping novelty simply because it is new and rejecting God’s work simply because it is unfamiliar.

The second danger can be particularly difficult for churches and institutions to recognize. We may pray passionately for renewal while quietly prescribing what renewal must look like. It must use our familiar language, preserve our established structures, affirm our existing authority, and resemble a previous season when God’s presence seemed especially clear.

A testimony can become a template. A former movement can become a monument. Nostalgia can disguise itself as faithfulness.

Then, when new life begins emerging through unfamiliar people, overlooked communities, or places we had dismissed as barren, we may resist the very renewal for which we prayed. We may conclude that God is absent because God is not working through the people, practices, and patterns we expected.

The same temptation exists within us personally. We can become attached to the way God once met us, the work through which we once served, what once gave our lives meaning, or the person we once believed we had to be. Those memories may remain sacred, but they do not have to dictate our future. Honoring who we have been does not require us to remain there.

Sometimes the new thing God is revealing is not an opportunity appearing outside us, but a truer life already emerging within us. It may begin quietly—small enough to overlook, unfamiliar enough to mistrust, and alive before anyone else recognizes or approves it.

The past testifies that God makes ways where none appear possible. Faith trusts that God is not restricted to making the same way twice. Honestly, I praise Jesus for that!

Friends, the new thing may already be emerging.

Can you see it?

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God’s faithfulness does not require God to repeat the past.

PRAYER
Faithful God, free us from confusing familiarity with faithfulness. Teach us to honor what you have done without restricting what you may do next. Give us wisdom to discern your character, courage to recognize your new work, and faith to follow the road you are creating. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 5: From Simple Stones to Special Stories

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A worn pair of black Doc Martens with red laces rests beside a cairn of river stones on a sunlit woodland trail. Handwritten poetry pages emerge from the boots as the path continues into the distance, symbolizing memories and stories carried across life’s many crossings.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “From Simple Stones to Special Stories” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Read Joshua 4:1–9

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation  about the glorious deeds of the LORD, about his power and his mighty wonders.” (Psalm 78:4 NLT)

When I was seventeen years old, I got my first pair of Doc Martens. More than three decades later, as I approach fifty, I still have them. They are worn, of course, but I can still put them on and walk in them.

To anyone else, they are simply an old pair of boots. They have little monetary value, and their scuffs and creases are hardly unusual. Yet when I look at them, I do not merely see worn leather. I see where my feet—and I—have been throughout much of my life.

I wrote poetry in those boots when I was seventeen. The young person wearing them carried hopes, fears, dreams, questions, and wounds I was still learning how to name. Poetry became one of the places where I could put what I was carrying when I did not know where else to place it.

I have continued writing through all the years since. The boots bear the physical marks of where my feet traveled. My poems bear the interior marks of where my spirit traveled.

Each poem and the boots themselves are like stones taken from a particular crossing. Some hold my hopes. Others contain my fears. Some preserve dreams, while others give form to nightmares. They carry moments of insight alongside moments of foolishness. Together, they form an altar of remembrance—one upon which my blood, sweat, tears, and entire unfinished self have been poured.

That does not make every poem equally wise. It does not mean every thought I preserved still represents who I am today. Some stones remind me how far I have come precisely because I would no longer say what I once said or see the world exactly as I once saw it.

Still, they belong to the story.

After Israel crossed the Jordan River, God instructed Joshua to choose twelve people, one from each tribe, and have each person carry a stone from the riverbed. Those stones were arranged as a memorial so that future generations would ask what they meant.

The stones themselves were ordinary. They were not carved with sacred words or transformed into precious jewels. What made them special was the story they carried. They came from a place through which the people could not have passed without God making a way.

The stones quietly proclaimed, “The Holy One met us here.”

They also belonged to the whole community. One stone was taken for each tribe. No single tribe possessed the entire testimony. Each carried part of the memorial, and together they told the story of a people whom God had brought across.

That matters because communities are often tempted to preserve only their preferred stones. We remember the victories while softening the failures. We celebrate those who held visible positions while overlooking those whose faithfulness was quieter. We repeat the stories that make us feel proud while leaving wounds, conflicts, exclusions, and uncomfortable truths buried beneath the river.

But an altar of remembrance built only from polished memories cannot bear honest testimony.

Faithful remembrance does not require us to pretend that every part of our history was good. Israel’s stones did not testify that Israel was flawless. They testified that God was faithful to an unfinished people. Our own memorials can do the same. The moments of joy, grief, wisdom, foolishness, courage, failure, healing, and change can all become part of a truthful witness to the grace that carried us.

The church has its stones too: buildings, traditions, hymns, communion tables, baptismal fonts, old photographs, handwritten records, and stories passed from one generation to another. These things can become sacred reminders of where God has met a community.

But the stones are not God.

A memorial becomes an idol when preserving it becomes more important than following the God to whom it points. The stones were meant to tell future generations how God brought the people across the river. They were never meant to keep the people standing forever on its bank.

My Doc Martens remind me where my feet have been. They do not tell my feet where they are allowed to go next. My poems preserve pieces of who I have been. They do not imprison me within an earlier version of myself.

The same is true for all our stones.

We carry them so that we can tell the truth about where we have been, recognize the grace that met us there, and trust God as we continue becoming. Ordinary stones become special stories when they bear witness—not merely to our past, but to the faithful presence of the One who carried us through it.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The stones we carry should help us remember where God met us, not prevent us from following where God leads next.

PRAYER
Faithful God, help us remember our stories truthfully. Teach us to recognize the grace that has carried us through joy, struggle, wisdom, and failure. May the stones we preserve bear witness to your presence without becoming barriers to where you are leading us next. Amen.

[i] Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).