“Look among the nations ! Watch !
Be horrified! Be frightened speechless !
For I am accomplishing a work in your days—
You would not believe it even if you were told !"
A few weeks ago, God had me meditating on "new things." The scripture that had leaped out to me was this one, in Habakkuk 1:5, that God is indeed does new things...which we wouldn't be able to believe, even if He told us.
It's a statement that raises profound theological questions.
We know that God is the same yesterday, today, and always. We know that God's BE-ing--"I AM THAT I AM"--His Character, could we speak as if His Absolute One-ness comprises separate elements...is integrally manifest in His every act.
How then could God do or say something "new," something He'd never said or done before, except He act contrary to His unchanging Character...by lying, for example, or doing unrighteousness...and negate His Being ?
And that, of course, He has never done, and never will. His promise to do a "new" thing can only be His accomodation, in human language, to our experience of God's Immediacy: His promise is that He will do things which we have never experienced before...or could even imagine.
Which is exactly God's Character, and exactly His unchanging way with us, always. His perceptive worshippers learn to expect His "inscrutability," His unexpectedness.
Habbakuk's words have seemed especially relevant because a few months ago our church left the denomination it had been affiliated with. And because of that change, the congregation had to choose its own pastor, which we'd never done before. I think we all have a sense of excitement that God is right now doing a "new thing" among us.
But as God says to Habakkuk, "new" things...especially unimaginable new things...also elicit fear. Even while we expect to be astounded by God, we are always most comfortable in life when "things" remain the same. When our world...which we cannot help seeing as our personal circumstances...changes, so must our "world-view," if it's to be based in reality: and God is always The Reality.
Because of Who God IS, our "tried and true" (and therefore comfortable) thoughts and reactions must change to accommodate His "new things:" and frankly, we fear change. And we deeply hate anything that requires we change.
I know I do.
It's undoubtedly God's intent in doing "new things," that we don't get comfortable except in His Reality. And in His greatest "new" work, Christ's death and resurrection, He promises we can change. For none but the changed can see His unimaginable works, and welcome and rejoice in the astonishing continual "newness" of our unchanging "I AM."
