“But 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.” (Isaiah 40:31) These words are very well known. Most often, we concentrate on all except the first five: but they who wait. Sure, we look forward to the grand finale, reaching that tape at the end of this race, but we tend to overlook the fact that there’s a whole lot of other things that need to happen first, which is when the rest of the verse takes place.
“But 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.” (Isaiah 40:31) These words are very well known. Most often, we concentrate on all except the first five: but they who wait. Sure, we look forward to the grand finale, reaching that tape at the end of this race, but we tend to overlook the fact that there’s a whole lot of other things that need to happen first, which is when the rest of the verse takes place.
Waiting. When we’re small children, we can’t wait to be old enough to get to leave the yard, visit down the street, and ride our bike through the neighborhood. Then we reach our early teens and can’t wait to stay out later, go to parties, and learn to drive. Later in our teens, we can’t wait to get to leave home and be on our own, renting a place with our friends while we go to jobs and maybe higher education. We begin to seek a “real” love as we can’t wait for someone to settle down with, get married, and have children. We go along about 20 years or so, then we can’t wait for retirement and an easier life. But then comes the grands, and life gets a little topsy turvy as we center our lives around them and we get to where we actually can wait and we want time to slow down.
Life is weird. Yet as we wander through all those years we find bumps and huge crevasses sometimes that detour us from what we felt should be a straight line path. When we met those detours, if we’re of the faith, we knew there was a purpose for them that perhaps we couldn’t see and understand at the time. So we waited. Maybe. If we did, while we walked in faith we noted that our perspective changed and with it, too, our goal. And, much to our surprise, this altered goal turned out to be so much better than what we had first anticipated. That’s when we’ll notice also that the Lord gave us the other attributes - strength and endurance - to keep us going even though we had no clue where.
Like I said, life is weird. And God has always given us the option of going His way or not. Doing all we do with the Lord always in the lead will bring us to prosperity in spirit, where it counts. And when we live in prosperity of spirit, everything comes to those who wait. That waiting, though ... Just pray through it.
