Blog
Fourth Sunday in Lent
A New Thing
by Lisa Miller Maidi
Joshua 5:9–12
Luke 15:1–3, 11b–32
Do not remember the former things,
–Isaiah 43:18–19
Or consider the things of old,
I am about to do 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.
I’d saved up onion bags and other mesh produce bags, devised a way to layer them, sew them with a polyester plumb line, and then scrunch up the rows to make nifty, colorful dish scrubbers. Proudly, I presented them to my United Women in Faith friend as an item to sell at our craft bazaar for missions. Linda admired them, offered me several more onion bags, and said she’d been making similar dish scrubbies for years. Clearly, the “new thing” that God is promising in Isaiah 43 is not my recycled mesh scrubbie.
Scripturally, the “new thing” is a second exodus, this time for the Israelites out of Babylon, echoing the earlier one from Egypt. Metaphorically, God promises us mercy in the wilderness of desolation, not by conquering enemies, but by offering resourcefulness. The miracle conveyed in Isaiah 43 is that God gives us the tool of inspired imagination!
I am improving my design and making more scrubbies to sell because they remind my congregation of plastic waste while recycling plastic mesh into a useful and cute item. Besides, the point of Isaiah 43’s “new thing” lies further in verse 19: “Do you not perceive it?” The newness is not in the actual thing but in our perception and in the inspiration that God gives us.
Prayer
We declare your praise, God our amazing Creator!
Infuse us with your creative Spirit that our inspired solutions might lead us with Christlike humility, into a better world. Amen.
Lisa Miller Maidi is a United Methodist deaconess. She was consecrated at the 2024 General Conference and was commissioned in Indiana to a self-titled welcoming the stranger ministry with refugees, interfaith relations, and poverty amelioration. She earned a Master of Theology from Garrett-Evangelical in 2011 and is working with a group to restart a Methodist Federation for Social Action community in the Indiana conference.
