You can tell a household is in transition by the boxes. They sit in the hallway half-packed, labelled in marker: KITCHEN, BOOKS, MUMMY’S THINGS. Perhaps the family is moving to a smaller place now the children have gone. Perhaps a job has taken someone overseas and the house is being let. Perhaps a marriage has brought two households together, or a death has left one person rattling around rooms that used to be full.
Seasons of change in the home are unsettling even when they are good. We long for a clear word that things are about to shift for the better. Many people reach for Job 22:28: “You will also declare a thing, and it will be established for you; so light will shine on your ways” (NKJV). It is a beautiful line, though it is worth remembering who first spoke it. Those words belong to Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, and by the end of the book God says the friends had not spoken rightly about Him (Job 42:7). That does not make every sentence false, but it invites us to hold it alongside the rest of Scripture.
A new thing, in the wilderness
For a word we can lean on fully, Isaiah offers one spoken by God Himself to a people facing upheaval. In the King James wording: “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” (Isaiah 43:18–19).
Notice two things. First, the new thing is God’s doing, not ours. We do not bring it into being by declaring it loudly enough. Second, it happens in the wilderness. The way is made through the dry place, not around it. The rivers come in the desert, not after we have left it.
That is a comfort for a family in the middle of boxes and paperwork. The disorder is not a sign that God has stopped working. It may be the very place He is making a road.
Letting the former things go
“Remember ye not the former things” does not mean pretending the past did not happen. Isaiah spends much of his book recalling what God had done before. It means not being ruled by it. Not insisting that life must look the way it used to.
In a move, this can be surprisingly concrete. The dining table that seated twelve will not fit in the new flat. The house where every doorframe has the children’s heights marked in pencil must be handed to strangers. Decisions about what to keep, what to give away and what to throw out can feel like small bereavements. It is right to grieve them. It is also right, eventually, to let them go, and to trust that God has something ahead that does not need all the furniture of the past.
Practical faith for a season of change
Faith in a transition is not only about waiting for God to act. It often looks like doing the next sensible thing with a quiet heart:
- Praying through one room at a time as you pack, thanking God for what happened there.
- Getting good advice before signing a new lease, selling or letting out the old house.
- Giving usable things to people who need them rather than storing them indefinitely.
- Telling the neighbours you are leaving, and saying a proper goodbye.
- Blessing the new place with a simple prayer on the first night, even if it is only a mattress on the floor.
New every morning
Lamentations, written in the ruins of a city, contains one of the Bible’s most hopeful lines: the Lord’s mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, and great is His faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22–23). The writer did not have a finished house. He had rubble. Yet he found God’s faithfulness there, one morning at a time.
Whatever shift your household is going through, it may not happen in minutes. It may happen morning by morning, box by box. The new thing God does rarely arrives as breaking news. More often it springs up quietly, and we realise afterwards that a way had been made.
For reflection
- What “former things” in your home is it time to thank God for and release?
- Where in your current season of change might God already be making a road?
Lord, You make a way in the wilderness. In the middle of boxes and decisions and goodbyes, help us see the new thing You are doing. Give us grace to let go of what is behind and faith to walk into what is ahead. Amen.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
Visit our YouTube Community ↗