The God Who Carries Us
By Dean Collins
Jerusalem fell, and it seemed to those in Babylonian captivity that there was no longer hope. Their idolatry and lack of faithfulness to God had been punished. Yet in the midst of their despair, the prophet Isaiah spoke words of comfort: that a voice cries out in the wilderness saying that the glory of the Lord would indeed be revealed.
We can relate because we have all had those moments when either our mistakes caught up with us and we were living in the aftermath and consequences of bad decisions, or we ended up in a mess simply because we live in a fallen world and unexpected and unplanned illness, financial difficulties, or market shifts swept over us and left us wondering if we would make it through our current challenges and its accompanying suffering. Isaiah 40 is a gift to us in times of despair.
Consider some of the reminders from this chapter:
Every valley shall be lifted up…
The glory of the Lord will be revealed…
The word of God will stand forever…
The Lord God comes with might…
He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms…
But when we are in the middle of our challenges, even these powerful reminders are hard to embrace because we can’t see when things will change for us. Times like these are the very moments when we need to do what Isaiah told his original audience—wait on the Lord.
Isaiah is not suggesting that we sit around until God does something. The Hebrew word for wait in this chapter is qavah, which means to wait expectantly. The idea of waiting in this context is similar to feeling the active tension of something about to happen. This expectancy is driven by remembering the ways that God has acted before in history and in our situations as well.
Chapter 40 ends with the familiar verses that tell us that those who wait on God will not grow faint or become weary but will renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles. This would have immediately caused the Hebrew reader to think of Exodus 19:4:
“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.”
Moses reminded the Israelites that just when the Egyptians were on the verge of overcoming them, God bore them on eagles’ wings and got them to safety and destroyed those who pursued them. But in Isaiah, these verses suggest that when we remember what God has done in the past and trust in his promises, we will mount up with wings. Just as God carried his children in the past, when we place all our faith in him, his Holy Spirit makes it possible that we will soar with eagles’ wings and find all the strength we need, even in our darkest days.
God made all this possible because of the victory he secured for us through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. We now have God’s Spirit inside of us, who daily gives us strength to endure and get through even the darkest days. But we must remember all the promises that God has kept in history and in our lives.
Father, today we choose to remember all the ways you have been faithful to us in the past. We remember all the ways you provided for us throughout history that resulted in the gift of our savior and king, Jesus. Today we wait, expecting your deliverance and knowing that as we trust in you, you will renew our strength and make us soar in ways we could never have imagined. Today we place all our hope and faith in Jesus. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Your Time with God’s Word
Isaiah 40:1-31; Exodus 19:4 ESV
Photo by Pexels
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