In the early 2000s, the home makeover shows on HGTV and TLC had me in a choke hold. They always featured deserving families—communities rallying to rebuild houses outfitted with the latest technology, personalized bedrooms, special requests to win hearts. This was feel-good television at its best. You couldn’t help but shed a tear seeing families move into beautiful new homes.
I feel a similar heart pull reading passages like Isaiah 65. The promise of what God is about to do attests to this aching longing that something isn’t right about how things are. When God promises newness, we feel it in our guts.
But here’s the problem with makeover culture: It packages transformation to maximize emotional impact without addressing the conditions that produce the need for it in the first place. These shows don’t provide resources to sustain what’s been made over. We bring similar assumptions to God’s transformation, connecting with these texts’ emotional hope without asking what God might mean by such transformation.
