Happy New Year! Time to forget the past?

There is a time to remember, and there is a time to forget. Very often the prophets of the Hebrew Bible called upon the people of God to remember the acts of God, the promises of God, the teachings of God, the covenant of God. This was evidently due to the human propensity to forget the past, to forget life-giving lessons learned the hard way, and to live in ignorance. On this New Year's Day I am struck, though, by the words of Isaiah 43:18-21 which exhort the Israelites to NOT remember the former things and to NOT consider the ways of old. 

Is. 43:18 Do not remember the former things,

or consider the things of old. (NRSV)

How strange these words sound compared to the chorus of prophetic calls to remember (even in the book of Isaiah; cf. Is 46:8-9). This call in Isaiah 43 to forget the past comes in the context of a contrast between the old things of the past and the new thing that God was about to do. Is. 43:19 continues, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" The prophet wrote of God making a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, giving drink to his parched people, and even creating the conditions in which the untamed animals of the wilderness (metaphorical language for the non-Jews of the ancient world) would honor him. This message would presumably have given comfort and hope to the Israelities who were suffering in exile. Much later the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus came to the belief that God had begun to fulfill these promises through the life and ministry of Jesus. Though they understood that this new thing had come about through Jesus, they still awaited the physical, spiritual, and environmental renewal about which Isaiah spoke. 

And readers of the Bible today likewise find themselves in a similar position to the Israelites to whom Isaiah wrote, and to the early Christians who read the words of Isaiah with new perspective: remembering an idealized past which featured God's active presence (either in the temple or in the incarnation), looking ahead to an idealized future renewal, but living in a present which, to all appearances, falls short of the supposed glories of both past and future. It is in this kind of present that we sometimes need to be exhorted to remember the past and other times need to be exhorted to leave the past behind and open our eyes to see the new thing that God may be doing in our day. 

If I may offer a New Year's wish: For each of us, may 2014 be a year in which we find a healthy balance between remembering the old things in an appropriate way and also remaining open to the new things each day brings. 

Happy New Year! Forget the old; embrace the new.