Endings can be sad. Your son calls you unexpectedly from college and wants nothing more than to tell you about his studies and his new girlfriend, and you're sad when the call has to end. Or you attend the symphony and are swept up by the glorious music and are very sorry when the finale comes. But of course, those are temporary endings.
Other endings are much more permanent. I just retired from seminary teaching after forty years of classroom work. While the newfound freedom and release from duty are pleasant, I am a little sad not to be able any more to watch students grow in their faith and learning, in all of their eagerness and questioning. I'm sure you must have similar sad feelings when you retire too and no longer have the challenge and satisfaction of accomplishment and the daily association with your colleagues.
But saddest of all are those times when a loved relationship comes to an end. One July I visited a friend who was slowly dying of kidney disease from diabetes. She looked healthy enough, but as I prepared to leave, she told me, "I won't see you again, and I want you to know that I love you very much." She died that September. Endings can be very sad indeed.
Of course endings can also some times be joyful. We have a friend in Africa who told us, "Where there's death, there's hope" -- hope for release from an oppressive government, hope for a remedy from poverty and tyranny. The endings of injustice, suffering, oppression, prejudice are devoutly to be desired.
Israel, in our Isaiah text, had no such joyful feelings about endings, however. Her life as a nation was at an end. The troops of the Babylonians had swept through her land, burned her temple and houses, broken down the walls of Jerusalem, and carried all but her poorest peasants into exile in Babylonia. Gone were her land, her davidic king, her priests, her temple, her ark of the covenant. She had become "no people," as Psalm 44 says, a "laughingstock" among the nations, an object of taunts and of derision and scorn (vv. 13-14).
What made it worse, according to Psalm 44, was that Israel had a memory. She remembered the days when God had given her victories, when he had pushed down her enemies and saved her from her foes. The previous generations had told her all about those glory days. But now the glory was gone and the Israelites lamented:
Yet thou hast cast us off and abased us,
and hast not gone out with our armies ...
Thou has made us like sheep for the slaughter,
and hast scattered us among the nations.
Thou hast sold thy people for a trifle,
demanding no high price for them.
Psalm 44:9-10, 12
Israel's life as a people was at an end, because God had deserted her, she was sure. "My way is hid from the Lord," she mourned, "and my right is disregarded by my God" (Isaiah 40:27). The end of a loving human relationship is bad enough, but the end of our relationship with God is worst of all.
The glad news of our text for the morning is that, for God, there are no sorrowful endings. Rather, there is always a future. "Remember not the former things," God tells the exiled Israelites (v. 18). Never mind the glory days of the past. And take no heed of your past sins that led you to your present sorry situation. "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (v. 19). God has a future for his exiled folk beyond their wildest imagination. According to our text, he will lead them once more out of slavery in a new exodus event. Waters will flow forth in the desert and even the wild beasts will praise his act (vv. 19-20). God will return to his people and lead them into a new life, defending them by his mighty right arm, but also feeding them like a shepherd, carrying them tenderly in his everlasting love, and gently leading those who are with young (40:9-11). The central message of the Second Isaiah, then, is that Israel is to wait for that new act, wait patiently for the God who will save her and renew her life once again (40:28-31).
We should note what kind of God can make such a promise, however. In verses 15-17 of our text, he is the Lord, the Holy One unlike any other, the Creator of Israel, her King. And as that Holy Lord and King, God is the one who defeated the mighty Egyptian Empire and delivered Israel out of Egyptian slavery in the first place. God is the one who has the power to defeat the might of nations, but God is also the one who has the love that can redeem and save his own. And that God, that God alone, is the one who can always give us a future.
God does not deal in permanent endings. And so you are at the end of a loving relationship, but God still has a future for you. You have reached the age of retirement, but God still has you in his plans. You are in a situation where you think you cannot go on, but God can strengthen and guide you on. You are at the end of your rope, but God holds you by a cord of love.
Indeed, some loved one of yours has died and you have been left behind, with nothing but emptiness to fill your days and the feeling that life is over. Christians, however, are those who never have to say goodbye. Beyond the grave, beyond the emptiness, beyond the sorrowful goodbye, there is God's eternal life, and God's joyful reunion of all those who love him, and yes, still the strength and the comfort that can give peace in the midst of loneliness. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ put an end to permanent endings. For the God who redeemed Israel out of slavery had the power and the love to overcome even death.
God has a future for us all, no matter what our situation. "Behold, I am doing a new thing," he tells us. Wait for it and expect it, trusting that he will never forget or forsake you.