By Pastor Andrea Garcia

Isaiah 40:27-31

Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹ He gives power to the faint,
    and strengthens the powerless.
³⁰ Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted;
³¹ 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.

Devotional:

God promises and supplies us with his unwavering love during every season, and especially during our seasons of waiting. The ‘waiting’ times in our lives are typically not those that we like to celebrate. For ‘waiting’ is often at best an experience we graciously put up with, or at worst, an experience we are forced to simply grit our teeth and endure. I don’t give much value to the experience of waiting in line at a restaurant; I rather treasure reaching that destination of getting to eat the food. But God treasures the spiritual journey of us learning to wait. How beautiful it is that His best work is most often accomplished in us not during the harvest but during the planting, the plowing, and the back-breaking work of waiting in anticipation for the crops to grow. 

“Those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength” – Isaiah 40:31 (NRSV)

The kind of waiting that the writer is referring to here is not passive but assumes our part to play in any kind of situation in which we truly have hopeful expectations. I am inclined to water my house plants periodically as I wait for them to grow because I hope and anticipate that there will be a beautiful, thriving plant on the other side. This is not a defeatist, ‘hands off’ and ‘give up’ kind of mentality. The hardest part about this kind of waiting, especially for those in the midst of great hardship or suffering, is to live into hope that there is, in fact, something better coming. This is hard work: which is allowing hope for something ‘not-yet-seen’ to drive our life-movement rather than the other way around. Thanks be to God that He can help us in this work! 

God gives us a picture of His sustaining love all throughout scripture, but in particular I wanted to point out this verse of Isaiah, in which the writer declares, 

“The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary.
    No one can measure the depths of his understanding.”

I know what it is to grow ‘weary’ of my fellows whether it is my daughter making demands at the end of a long day, or a co-worker’s cross comment, or my own hurts and hang-ups making it easy to misunderstand the good intention of another. God is so gracious and as the one who is LOVE, He has never grown weary of me or of you. What a thought! His understanding is so deep and fathomless that he sees through all the complexities and sees us as we are, and with the perfect mix of discernment and Love He calls us up to higher heights then we could ever reach on our own strength. If He has never grown weary of me, then this is true of my fellows, and how I want to grow so that I too can never grow weary of those that He loves. 

“Those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength.” 

Reflection: 

Is there something in your life that feels like you are in a season of waiting? What are your expectations, hopes and dreams for the ‘other side’ of that waiting? Are those expectations, hopes, and dreams developed from time spent in surrender and prayer with God? 

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, 

We are grateful that the depths of your love are deeper still than any brokenness we experience in this world. Thank you for loving us through and through, and that your love is not only enough to sustain us but carries us to greater heights than we could ever accomplish on our own. We ask for Your imagination and renewed passion to be poured into us in those places where the waiting is wearing us down. Teach us how to more fully put our hope and trust in You. 

In the name of Your son, Jesus Christ, we pray, 

Amen.

*Pastor Andrea Garcia is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene and the sister-in-law to Pastor JJ Wyzinski.*