Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. –Isaiah 43:19

I remember when I was in grade school, my teacher had our class do a project that would help us learn about plant life. We were each given a planter box, some soil and one seed. We were instructed to put the soil in the box and plant the seed in the soil. We would monitor our box everyday, taking careful note of all the observations we made. We were so excited to see those plants break through the soil.

As we waited for our seeds to sprout, our excitement quickly faded to disappointment, and even to anger. What began as the most anticipated time of the day, quickly became the most boring. I remember hearing my peers around me exclaim, “What’s the point?!” as they sprawled out onto their chairs.

“What’s the point?”

As we stared at the soil the first couple days, we saw nothing change. When we saw that nothing was changing, we had to make a choice–believe what the teacher told us would happen, or believe what our circumstance was telling us: that nothing was happening. So many of us can be like these students. Full of excitement, but quick to become discouraged when we don’t see anything happening. In the midst of trial, I find myself contemplating the same question those kids asked themselves: “What’s the point?”

When we fix our eyes on our circumstances, we tend to be swayed by what our circumstance show us. We can be excited and full of hope when things are good, and then quickly become depressed and disillusioned when things change. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, our will becomes conformed to his will, and we begin to see that he’s bringing his promises to pass.

God gave me Isaiah 43:19 as a promise during this fast. He’s doing a new thing in this season. He’s causing roads to appear in wilderness and rivers to form in the desert. He’s mending broken hearts and bringing the lost into the Kingdom. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we can trust even when we don’t see the promise. We can even begin to expect the unexpected.