Isaiah 13

If there’s one thing I had to become quickly accustomed to as a new parent, it was driving around in the car with my daughter strapped into her car seat behind me—facing backwards. Since I was often driving with no other adults in the car, I wasn’t crazy about the requirement of a rear-facing seat for babies since it meant I wouldn’t be able to see Caroline at all while I was behind the wheel. A thousand wild ideas of what could “happen” to her while I couldn’t see her used to go through my head. So, before I could drive myself crazy, my husband bought a mirror that attached to the seat she was facing so at least I could see her reflection. Problem solved.

But as I read this chapter of Isaiah today, it occurred to me that I had never considered what car rides must have been like from my daughter’s point of view those days. There she sat, facing the back of the car, relegated to seeing only where we had been, not where we were going. When she got fussy or restless, she could certainly hear my voice, but she couldn’t see my face. Most of the time, she rode very peacefully in her seat, but she never knew where we were headed.

Come to think of it, isn’t this what most of our life is like? Do you ever get the feeling that someone other than you is “driving” your car? Do you ever feel like you’re only able to see where you’ve been, not where you’re going? Do you ever think that, while it’s sure nice to hear God’s voice, you’d really like to see His face? I guess that about sums it up for me. Sometimes I feel like a nine-month-old kid in a rear-facing car seat.

And then I read something in the Bible like Isaiah 13, where Isaiah predicts the desolation of Babylon, that great superpower… oh, except Babylon wasn’t a superpower when he delivered this prophecy. In fact, when Isaiah uttered these words, it was a good one hundred years before Babylon would even rise to power, let alone be conquered! Isaiah spoke this prophecy about the desolation of Babylon when it was just an obscure place with no indication of its coming greatness.

And if Babylon hadn’t risen to greatness yet, the Medes that Isaiah mentioned in verse 17 hadn’t even been considered! Their conquest against Babylon was even further down the line. Yet, this prophecy came true. Babylon conquered Assyria and rose to power. And then, the Medes came along and conquered the Babylonians, contributing to the eventual demise of the great empire.

Do you get the feeling that Someone Else is “driving” the car? Now, every analogy has its limits, of course. I wouldn’t want to suggest that God is “driving” the car in the sense of making all the decisions and treating us like pawns or puppets. But when it comes down to the question of knowing where this world is headed, it seems like God has a pretty clear view out the front windshield!

I don’t know about you, but that is a very comforting thought to me—especially in this craziest-of-all-crazy years, when it looks like the world is falling apart no matter which way you turn. God doesn’t look at our world and wonder what’s going to happen next. God doesn’t look at our world and wonder how it’s all going to turn out. No, God knows the future. When we can only see where we’ve been, He can see (quite clearly!) where we’re going. Nothing is a surprise to Him.

So, relax. Enjoy the ride. These seats won’t be rear-facing forever!