Isaiah 43:18-19 –Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

There are times in my life when I have a sense of God working, of Him taking away the things of old and doing new things. I’m feeling that way at the moment. The company I’m working for is going through major changes. Myra and I are considering our finances, and when the time will come for us to change our house … I’ve had these feelings before and been wrong, but sometimes I’ve been right!
I don’t really enjoy major life changes, but I have come to realize that they are inevitable.
The passage in Isaiah — these verses and the ones around it — speaks of God’s intention to liberate His people and bring them back to Israel. Just as with the first rescue — the Exodus from Egypt — there was to be a long desert march. Unlike for the Exodus, God is going to clear the way. This is the new thing He is preparing.
A lot of change seems like this. There can be a difficult path to follow — but if the change is of God, He will clear the way along the path.
There is another thing in this little passage. “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old”. The new thing that God is preparing for Israel would be so great that all His former works would be forgotten. Looking back in my life, I can see that God has taken care of me and that at many times in my life He has done “a new thing”, and that new thing has been better than what went before.
There is yet another thing about this passage. The “new thing” that God will do refers not just to the return from the Babylonian exile. It refers, too, to a future blessing — one so much greater than any that has gone before.
It should, I think, be impossible to read and meditate on this passage in Isaiah without remembering another passage from 2 Corinthians:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

We, like Paul, can reflect that by the agency of the Holy Spirit, we are new creations and we can know that we need not remember former things. We can also know that God is preparing a new thing for us — that will make everything that happens before it to be not worth remembering!
Change can be difficult — but when God is directing, I can trust that it will be wonderful …