Isaiah 43:18

Isaiah 43:18 calls God's people to stop dwelling on the past because He is about to do something new. The command is direct: do not keep rehearsing "the former things" or fixating on "the things of old." It is a summons to release the grip the past holds on the present.

This must be read together with the verse that follows, where God announces, "Behold, I will do a new thing." The call to forget is not a denial of history -- earlier in this very chapter God recalls the exodus and His past faithfulness. Rather, it is a warning against letting former experiences, even glorious ones, become a ceiling that limits expectation of what God can still do. The exiles might cling to past deliverances as the standard, or be paralyzed by past failures. God says: look forward. The new thing He is preparing will surpass what has gone before. There is freeing pastoral wisdom here. Past glories can make us nostalgic and complacent; past wounds can keep us bound. This verse invites a holy forgetting -- not erasing memory, but loosening its hold -- so that hands and hearts are open to receive the fresh work God is bringing. The best is not always behind; with God, it can be ahead.