Daily Manna · Day 264 · September 21
Waiting Renews Strength
“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
Babylon, in the sixth century before Christ, among a second generation of exiles who had never seen Jerusalem and had started saying it aloud: my way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God.
The promise is the answer to that complaint, and the word wait is not a passive one. It carries the sense of a cord twisted tight, of hanging on under load. Then watch the order, which runs the wrong way round for a piece of rhetoric. Mount up with wings as eagles, then run, then walk. Any speaker building to a climax ends on the eagle. Isaiah ends on walking and not fainting, because that was what they needed for the road ahead of them, and because it is the last thing anybody actually gets.
Lord, I asked to be lifted and I have not been lifted, and I have been reading that as a no. Teach me to ask for the third thing. Not the wings. Not even the running. Strength to walk into the same ward, the same house, the same job, and not faint in it. Renew what is spent at the pace you choose. Hold me to the waiting when I would rather have the answer.
The generation that first heard this walked home. Ezra's company later covered the same road in four months on foot, one step after another. There are no wings anywhere in the account of it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 264 is Draw Nigh (James 4:8).