Old Truths, New Mercies
One winter morning, I had the strange experience of being awake before my children. (Full disclosure: the two-year-old woke me up, then he went back to sleep while I could not.)
As I lay awake in bed, my mind began running on a familiar treadmill. I ran through a list of worries—past, present, and future—until I had built up a knot of stress. I ran through a list of ways I had been wronged, firing up engines of anger.
What a terrible way to start a day.
Through the bedroom curtains, I could see that the darkness outside was fading into a pale blue. The sun was coming up. When was the last time I had seen a sunrise? I needed to walk and to pray, to work out the kinks that had already surfaced in my attitude for the day.
I slipped out of the bedroom, certain that I would not be able to make it out the front door without my children’s ears perking up at the sound of my coat zipper. To my surprise, they slept on and I made my escape. On my way out the door, I texted my husband that I was going for a walk.
To the west, the sky was a soft purple. I headed east, toward the growing light. I marched toward the woods, toward the trees that blocked my view. I marched and I prayed, and I felt better, being alone in the silence and the fresh air.
I had to walk farther than I expected, following twists in the trail, thinking each turn would give me a view of that rising sun. I spotted glimpses of it piercing through the birch trees, golden rays encouraging me in my hunt.
Finally, I came to a clearing. There it was. The sun, spilling over the horizon. It seemed to look like the ball of fire it is. A rich orange, liquid movement rippling within its circle shape.
Golden light spread across the clearing. Every frosted branch, every reed seemed to shine. Bushes glowed. The pine trees along the edge of the trail seemed to be standing at attention, turning their faces to the first warm rays of the day. Even the hydro towers seemed to be transformed in its light.
I was caught by the beauty of it, the energy of it, the power of it. I couldn’t help but think—I have seen a sunrise before. Why does it catch my breath?
The sun rises and the sun sets every day. Every day. There is nothing new about this scene. Describing a sunrise is almost impossible to do without falling into clichés, because it’s been seen and it’s been written about countless times.
And yet, each sunrise holds something fresh. There is something woven into us that calls a sunrise beautiful, that pauses over our morning coffee to admire it through the window, that causes people to set up lawn chairs to sit and watch. It is really a mundane observation of nature, and yet it makes up paintings and postcards.
We don’t need something to be new for it to fall with fresh force on us. In fact, we really need the same truths to rise again on the horizon of our minds.
We know that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb.13:8). In Lamentations 3:22, the love of the Lord is described as “steadfast” and never-ending. In the very next verse, however, we are told that the mercies of the Lord—springing from his eternal faithfulness—are “new every morning” (Lam. 3:23). He is steadier than the rising and setting of the sun, yet there is nothing mundane about the pursuit of him.
On this journey with God, we’re not meant to tick off spiritual lessons, one at a time, never to revisit them again. Okay, done with that one! Moving on!
So much of this journey with God is allowing those same, familiar lessons to settle deeper into our bones, to be struck with wonder again by things we may have learned in children’s Sunday school.
We are not climbing a ladder; we are on a deepening spiral of discovery.
The same questions can captivate us over and over, year after year. What is the gospel? What is the Good News? What is prayer? What does it mean to follow Jesus?
We might be the ones teaching Sunday school now, with decades of faith behind us. We might be embarrassed to be wrestling with these questions. But each time we’re drawn in to one of those questions, we can see it in a new way. We may stumble back, pause, startled again by beauty. The circumstances of our lives will be different, and suddenly we may find the shifting world around us lit up by a familiar truth.
When we listen to the voice of God, in Scripture and in prayer, we might find that the messages are repetitive. They are often things that, if questioned, we would say—“Yes, of course I believe that! I knew that one.”
I love you. You are forgiven. You are mine. I am with you. Follow me.
Yet, when revealed through the work of the Holy Spirit, the beauty can be stunning.
What truth might God want to reveal to us again today, to recast our perspective on the circumstances we face today? What truth has become dull to us—what truth needs to blaze again into our hearts with power?
And as I think of my own children—the two little boys that slept as I slipped out the door—it makes sense. What kind of mother would I be, if I told them I loved them and then checked off that box to move on to other things? No, I pull those boys to me multiple times every day and I tell them the same thing.
I love you.
Even more so, our heavenly Father reveals his perfect love again and again.
