Isaiah 40:21-31
There’s a man – let’s call him Rick, who used to manage a church camp. Each spring involved a lot of work to get the lodge, cabins and grounds ready for the summer program. Once the summer program started, Rick had a staff to do the counseling, maintenance and cooking, but in the spring, he had to rely on whomever he could hire on an hourly basis.
One spring he ended up with two employees. One was a vigorous young man who had just graduated from high school. The other was a retired farmer with a heart condition.
And which one do you think accomplished the most work each day?
You guessed it – it was the farmer. The young man was willing enough, but the farmer, even with his heart problem, always got more done. One reason was that he just knew how to do things. He’d had a lot of experience from running his farm, and he didn’t need much direction. But he also knew how to marshal his energy. He’d have to rest occasionally, but when he was on his feet, he did what needed to be done with a minimum of exertion so that he wasn’t expending all his energy in a burst.
On one occasion, there was a new camp sign to erect. The young man put his strong back into the job and dug for all he was worth. When he got tired, the farmer took his turn on the post-hole digger as well, but when they finished, the young man was all used up for the day. The farmer was planning to go help his son with the evening milking of the cows.
Now … let’s reread the closing verses of Isaiah 40:
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
Of course, those verses are not simply a commentary on the energy level of different generations.
Chapters 40-55 of Isaiah address the people of Judah in exile from their homeland, living as captives in Babylonia. They don’t know it yet, but their years of exile are soon to end.
But at the time this is written, the people are still captive, so the prophet comes to announce to the people that God is about to deliver them.
Isaiah 40:21-31 is part of a longer speech in which the prophet seeks to rehabilitate the exiles’ concept of God. When the Babylonians had defeated Judah, many of the Jews concluded that the gods of Babylonia were stronger than the God of Judah. So now, the prophet reminds the people of the power of God Almighty, using rhetorical questions and dramatic comparisons. The prophet’s argument reaches its high point in these words:
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
God does not faint or grow weary;
the LORD’S understanding is unsearchable. (v. 28)
And then he goes on to indicate that not only is God able to rescue them, but is also willing to do so. And that’s where the prophet begins talking about God’s giving strength to the faint and powerless, so that those who wait on the Lord – who rely on God, will have a sustaining vigor that exceeds even that of the young and naturally strong.
In the context of the passage, the exiles are surely the ones who are faint and powerless. They have no say-so over what happens to them. But they shouldn’t surrender to despair because God’s both able and willing to help them. For their part, they need to wait on the Lord, and when they do, says the prophet,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint. (v. 31b, c)
We, of course, are not in the sandals of the exiles. But we, too, have a journey through life that can be exhausting and sapping, for there’s no shortage of things that wear us down.
For starters, there are simply the demands of each day. At one 7 p.m. church meeting, a woman looked at another woman and said to her, “I see you’re wearing your ‘evening face.’” Everyone present knew immediately what that meant. By the time we get to midlife, the juice that enables us to get things done tends to run out before the hours of the day do.
But there are larger issues that sap our energy, too. If we pay attention to the news, we can hardly keep a bounce in our step. Closer to home, there is stuff that undermines our vigor as well. We have problems at work, difficulties in our relationships, worries about our children, unwelcome interruptions in our plans, and unexpected health difficulties.
Even our trips to church sometimes add to the loads we carry. More than one observer has described church as the place where you go to be told week after week that you are not doing enough for God and that you have got to do more – and be given precious little instruction for how to do that. That’s tiring!
The Isaiah passage is addressed to people who have been worn down. To them the prophet advises, “Wait for the LORD.” Those who wait for the Lord will “not be weary.” In other words, they’ll be “unweary.” That’s not a dictionary word, but it captures what this prophecy is saying. It is not saying, “Just trust God and you’ll be supercharged in the race of life.” On the contrary, the image is more like that of the old farmer at the church camp who goes along, keeping energy expenditure to the minimum needed to keep moving and get the job done. He’s not weary, but neither is he fresh and buoyant. He’s the unweary runner.
But what does it mean to wait on the Lord?
In short, waiting on the Lord means carrying on with the tasks at hand in a state of trust. When we do that, the continuing on itself can become the medium through which God strengthens us.
In 1999, Kirk Johnson, a New York Times reporter, ran the nation’s toughest ultra-marathon, the Badwater. Unlike regular marathons, such as the 26-mile New York event where runners compete against each other, ultra-marathoners compete against the course itself. That’s because ultra-marathons are set in places of extreme hardship. So, if you finish within the established timeframe, you have won. It’s a personal contest.
Badwater is the worst of the ultra-marathons. It’s run across Death Valley in, get this – July. The footrace begins at Badwater, which at 282 feet below sea level is the lowest and hottest spot in the Western Hemisphere.
The race goes 135 miles from there to the trailhead of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states. The trailhead is at 8,360 feet. Runners, who must have a support team accompanying them, have to complete the race within 60 hours. They encounter temperatures of 120 degrees and higher, 40-mph headwinds, and lightning storms.
Johnson was 41 years old and of average athletic ability when he learned about the race from a woman who’d done it. His decision to run it himself came after his older brother, without warning or hint of trouble, and without explanation, committed suicide. Struggling to comprehend his brother’s surrender of life, Johnson gradually determined to run the race.
That decision led to months of training, and during that period, many of his coworkers at The New York Times questioned his plans. Johnson could give no clear answer, but he acknowledged that something other than logic drove him, something beyond himself.
The run proved to be every bit the grueling ordeal Johnson expected. During the dark hours of the second night, he hallucinated from exhaustion. Still, he finished. Forty-two runners started but nine dropped out, including some younger than Johnson. He came in second to last, but, of course, speed was never the issue.
Johnson ended with something far beyond an evening face, but Badwater became the medium through which the inner struggle with his brother’s suicide resolved. Johnson later wrote:
“Running Badwater isn’t about limits and boundaries at all, as I’d once thought, but rather about going on and never giving up. For all its imagery of death and the severity of its climate, Death Valley and Badwater are about choosing life.
And when I figured that out, I finally understood that I hadn’t entered the race to get closer to my brother … or to honor him at all, as I’d imagined at one time, but rather for totally opposite reasons – to put some distance between us, and to refute the terror and uncertainty that his death had introduced into my life. Badwater exposed that fact – brutally and honestly and with no gauzy sentimentality. I go on.” (286)
“I go on.” Johnson became an unweary runner.
We may arrive at the end of any given day with an evening face, but by waiting on the Lord, we can be unweary runners, people with the resources for dealing with what comes up during the day – and we will arrive at the end of our life’s journey with the energy to continue on into God’s great eternity.
