Daily Manna · Day 266 · September 23
A New Thing Springs Forth
“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.”
God does not repeat himself.
Read the chapter and it is one long recital of what he has done. Created thee, formed thee, redeemed thee, called thee by thy name. Through the waters, through the rivers, through the fire. And then, a few verses back, the Red Sea itself: which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power.
Then he tells them to stop looking at it. Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. That is a startling thing to say four lines after reciting them. He is not embarrassed by the old rescue. He is refusing to be trapped inside it, and he adds a question with an edge on it: shall ye not know it? The risk he names is not that the new thing fails to come. It is that it comes and nobody recognises it, because their eyes are trained on a map of the last one.
I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. Not a way around the wilderness. A way in it, and water where nothing drinks.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 266 is Made in Wisdom (Psalm 104:24).