Uma coisa nova, Deus está fazendo (A new thing God is doing)

No! This isn't an article in Portuguese, but a line from a song that always rings in my head.

If you've heard it, you can't tell me that this same line hasn't stuck in your head.

The Italian translation is clear: A new thing, God is doing. I'm honest, I didn't even use Google Translate hahaha. Simply because when something is clear, it's clear in every language. After the tower of Babel and the creation of new languages, what God wanted was the universality of making things clear, that is, making them understood even without knowing the languages, as in this case, reading the title of this song.

Why should God do new things, why should God show a miracle like making a river spring up in a desert?

Simple: He doesn't need to do something new, because He has already thought of everything; but when we see something new, it's because our eyes open to something we hadn't seen before or didn't want to see clearly before.

Listening to this song, it's almost natural to keep repeating that line, and this verse opens up in my mind again: Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20

So the events of our life are shaped by our conditions. What we live is what shapes us. That's exactly why we shouldn't be surprised when we see someone living a life different from ours, even in a wrong way; after all, the person we're looking at isn't seeing life with our eyes. Vice versa, we would look wrong in the eyes of this person, who is facing life according to the conditions that have shaped them.

At work I pointed out to my colleague how an excessive number of people weren't wearing their seat belts. Another colleague even answered that not wearing a seat belt was taken for granted around here, and in his view my dwelling on it was almost an exaggeration.

Let me say that until some time ago I didn't wear a seat belt either, and I even used those fake belt buckles so I wouldn't hear the car's beeper warning me I hadn't fastened it. And yet, during a trip, with my wife driving, after I'd fallen asleep I had a dream in which I saw the death of someone in a wheelchair who died because of an accident. I woke up with a start, frightening my wife too, and told her we had to remove those things from the belts and wear them, so great had my fright been.

Now, I understand that a thousand side discussions could be opened on the subject, to argue about this and that, but what I want to get across is surely becoming aware of something and being able to change your point of view, as with using the most ordinary seat belt, or, much more practically, protecting your own life.

Ahhh! Do you know what the colleague I'd pointed out the belts to answered? He looked at me in amazement and asked me a question: but does my car even have seat belts?

This was, and is, my colleague's point of view on seat belts: an inevitable naturalness in not wearing them, because it's natural that in the "world" he lives in they aren't worn. And yet they were invented. Probably they won't be needed, but they're there. They were invented to protect us in moments of danger, but in this case too the general trend affects their use.

Examples could be given on other subjects too, and as I said before, I don't see my colleague as wrong, but as unaware of not having considered that condition of his life for his own protection.

Because of choices "of belief", that is, loving the example of Christ and trying to imitate Him (sometimes wrongly too, because I can't always be "good"), I've found myself judged and even pushed away by friends, acquaintances and, why not, family members.

Now, the example of what has changed in my life is meant to be my way of opening your eyes to a new thing for your life, getting you to look at yourself and weigh what you do differently or newly compared with others. This is also to allow you to help others change that wrong attitude you may see in their lives. I read on someone's profile that their life goal was change, and I wondered how far one would go in changing in this life, knowing you'd crash into all the opposing things you'd find by making a U-turn against the general trend.

Is it really worth changing for something or for someone?

I chose a road contrary to the whole trend of this world, and yet I always find myself very much in Paul's words in the letter to the Philippians, where he wrote: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:21"

Perfection is not in this world, but Perfection made this World and also made me and you. God showed us our mistakes through Adam and our redemption through His Son. The will of all the laws to "perfect" our existence will lead us nowhere, only to doing one thing right and the other wrong. Christ allows us to access the Grace of something that has already been paid for. If you want to redeem your life, it's only by taking Grace through the love of Christ, starting to look upwards and no longer at the things turning around you, and beginning to be a new Adam. After all, Adam is the example of what God gave us, that is, the chance to enjoy everything that was created. Christ is now the redemption of that mistake made by Adam, setting us free to start enjoying again everything that was created.

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:18-19