Yesterday Is Gone

There is a particular habit of mind that loves to carry yesterday into today. To replay the conversation that went wrong. To rehearse the mistake that cannot be undone. To drag the weight of last week into the fresh space of this morning.

God does something striking in Isaiah 43. He says: stop looking backward. Not because the past was not real, or did not matter — but because something new is already happening, and you will miss it if you are turned around looking at what was.

'Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth.' That word 'now' is doing significant work. Not eventually, not once you have properly processed the past, not when the time is right. Now. The new thing is already beginning. The question is whether you will have eyes to see it.

Yesterday is gone. Whatever it held — regret, disappointment, an argument, a missed opportunity, a general sense of falling short — it is in the past, which is the one place you cannot follow it. You are here, in today, which is the only place the new thing is springing up.

Turn around. Face forward. The wilderness you were walking through is being rerouted. There is a way being made, even now, and rivers appearing in the places that looked like desert.

You do not have to figure out how. You only have to face the right direction.