The Ones Who Wait

But those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31, WEB)

By the time Isaiah writes these words he has been talking to people who are worn out, who feel that God has stopped noticing them, who wonder aloud whether their way is hidden from the Lord. His answer is not a rebuke, and it is not a demand that they try harder. They 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.

The promise belongs to those who wait, and waiting is the hardest possible assignment for a tired man who wants this over. Waiting can feel like doing nothing, like losing time, like giving up disguised as patience. But the waiting Isaiah means is not passive drifting. It is the posture of a man who has run out of his own strength and keeps his hope fixed on God to supply what he cannot generate himself. He waits the way a man waits for water he cannot make, still and expectant, turned toward the source. The strength that comes is renewed, which means it is not your old strength patched up and sent back out. It is new, and it comes from outside you, from the God who does not grow tired.

Notice the order at the end, because it goes the opposite way from how we would write it. Wings, then running, then walking. It descends to the ordinary rather than climbing toward the spectacular. The final promise, the one Isaiah saves for last, is not that you will soar but that you will walk and not faint, that you will keep putting one foot in front of the other through a long ordinary Tuesday when nothing dramatic is happening and nothing feels won. For most of this fight, that is the miracle you actually need. Not flight. Just the strength to not fall down on the flat, unremarkable stretch of road.

Father, I am worn thin and my own strength is gone. I will wait on you. Renew what I do not have, and help me walk today without fainting.