Daily Manna · Day 109 · April 19
Power to the Faint
“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”
The obvious complaint is that this reads like an offer for other people. Dinner still has to happen, and the homework, and the email you owe, and two more hours of being warm at somebody. By four in the afternoon you are running on nothing and pretending otherwise, and a verse about power for the faint sounds like it is addressed to people who are already coping.
But look at who is named. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Two groups: the empty, and the ones with nothing left. Those are the only two categories mentioned. If you were holding up well, this verse would go past you without stopping. Your exhaustion is not evidence that you are failing at this. It is the qualification.
And Isaiah has arranged the context to make that unmistakable. The verse before is about God: the everlasting God fainteth not, neither is weary. The verse after is about people at their strongest: even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. The chapter deliberately puts the fittest possible humans on the floor before the promise arrives, so that nobody reads it as a supplement for the already-capable. Then comes the condition, and it is one word: waiting on the LORD is what gets a person's strength renewed. Wait, which is the same root as the cord that is twisted, and carries the sense of binding yourself to something.
So do the thing that feels like the opposite of strength. Take the one task you have dragged through the whole week and ask somebody for help with it today, by name, without the apology attached. Admitting you have no might left is not a detour around this verse. It is how you stand where it can reach you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 109 is Brought From Lodebar (2 Samuel 9:8).