And so we come to the final, soaring words of Isaiah 40:
27 Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
It is easy to think we are disregarded and hidden. Unseen. Unheeded. There is so much that can be said, perhaps so much that needs to be said when we are in such a state. Those in exile in Babylon at the time this prophecy addresses clearly felt that they were disregarded and hidden.
It is striking to see that they are not comforted by the idea that God cares for them – although that is true. The text though takes us in a different direction. They are comforted by knowing that God is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth who does not grow tired and weary, and his understanding no-one can fathom.
Why is this such a comfort when we feel disregarded and abandoned? Perhaps the point is that it comforts us because it assures that God is not finished. At those times when we may feel abandoned by our God, when we feel that he has stopped working we are assured in this passage that God is the God who made everything – he started, and he does not get tired or weary. God does not give up. What God has begun, he will keep on with – and that includes his work in us.
Not only that but in parallel with the reality that God does not grow tired, or weary we are told that his understanding no one can fathom. I find this parallel fascinating. I’m not sure I would naturally pair God’s endurance with his wisdom. But it does have immense power to comfort us – because God’s wisdom means that he knows what he is doing. If he seems to be disregarding us, and to be hidden, there is more to the story.
That doesn’t make his hiddenness seem any easier much of the time, but is does mean that we can remind ourselves that we are not at the end. God is still at work, and God does not get tired or weary of his work.
For right now I’m guessing that most people who read this are tired and weary. Tired of two years of dealing with Covid. Two years either of immediate physical threat, or two years of isolation, rule changes and ever changing plans. If you have any kind of leadership responsibility, whether as a parent, teacher, church leader, manager or anything else that tiredness and weariness is magnified further.
In the midst of that tiredness and weariness comes this good news of a God who does not get tired or weary. You cannot wear God out. We cannot make God weary with our tears, with our anger, or even with our sin. God does not give up on us. We cannot fathom his understanding, his insight – we cannot fathom how it might be that he does not tired or weary of us at times, for when can get so weary and tired of others, and perhaps even more so weary and tired of ourselves. God does not.
It is the midst of this tiredness and weariness that God comes to give strength to those of us who are tired and weary – which, even the strongest of us (the youths of v30) become. Even people in their prime stumble and fall. But if we put our hope in God, or as some translations have it, if we wait for God, then we will renew our strength.
If we wait. Advent is a reminder that we need to wait. We could not achieve our salvation – Christ had to come, and the world had to wait. We cannot build God’s kingdom by our efforts – Christ has to return. And the world has to wait. All of our activity needs to be judged by this. Does it have a posture of waiting? Does it acknowledge that our efforts are at best provisional, and need completion by someone stronger and greater?
If we wait like this then we will renew our strength. We will be able to soar on wings like eagles – given the strength to take to flight, when the air currents move us. There will come time when God will provide the right situation for us to soar, and if we have waited for him we will be enabled to fly. Our efforts and God’s power here are intertwined and work together – we are not simply passively waiting – we are waiting and renewing our strength, waiting for the Spirit to take us and enable our soaring.
And then after the soaring comes the running – without getting weary – youths on their own get weary, but those empowered by God can run without becoming weary. After the running the walking – without fainting – or more precisely without becoming tired. Just as God has been said to not grow tired and weary (v28) and youths and young men do get tired and weary (v30), so those who wait for Yahweh will not get weary as they run or tired as they walk.
I find that order fascinating – soar, run, walk. It seems to get slower – which might anticlimactic, except that I also think it fits with the life of the church. There are times of soaring that we should pray for and look for and long for – times where everything happens without seeming to need effort, but then there are other good times of running – we need to put more effort in, but there is little resistance, life is good – and if we wait for God we will be enabled to keep going in those times. Then there are times of just walking, when the naturalness of soaring perhaps is not there – but even in those times God’s strength will come to enable us to keep going and not get tired of the keeping going.
This isn’t saying we will never feel physically tired if only we would trust in God – that would be a dangerous way to apply this text to life and ministry. What I think it is saying is that strength is there for those who come back to God. The question at any moment may be to discern what the strength is there for. If I try to do everything I see that is good I will, no question get exhausted. If I stop and wait for God, asking for his strength, and his wisdom as to what the good I should do in this moment is, then I can expect to see his strength provided. It may not be given for everything I want to do. God enables me to do what fits with his plans, not mine.
Advent time is perhaps a good time to ask God what those plans are. A good time to commit to enforcing times of waiting in our lives. Daily waiting to listen for his voice in the day. Weekly waiting to stop our activity and work and ask what we need to focus on. Other regular waiting to reassess our lives. And perhaps too waiting that doesn’t have a structure and an agenda. A waiting that is unafraid to simply ask what God would have us do, and how he wants to meet with us.
Perhaps in the midst of ever-changing covid circumstances and regulations we need this more than ever. The danger is that we will always react. That we will always need to have an opinion and a plan. Sometimes it is OK to stop and not have a plan. There is someone else who has a plan. He isn’t in a hurry. He didn’t send a 33 year old man to die on a cross. He sent a baby, to grow up, and live as one of us, doing nothing that seems to have been thought worth recording for most of that life. His life seems to have been one of waiting – a waiting that culminated in his baptism an act of profound identification with us, that seems at the very least to show that he needed the approval of the Father and the empowering of the Spirit before he could begin his activity.
So we wait. We wait for the everlasting God, who does get tired or weary, and whose way of working is utterly beyond our understanding. We wait for him. Perhaps remind yourself of who we wait for in the words of this simple, but profound song this advent. The song is Jesus: Strong and Kind by City Alight, and it is one I have repeatedly come back to during these last two years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Y8s-Sz_ac
Joshua's Tree Rooted 