Carried from Start to Finish

You may want to object that this is a promise for old age, and that you have decades before it applies to you. I would answer that the verse covers both ends deliberately, and that the middle is where you are and where it is hardest to believe.

I want you to see what it is set against, because Isaiah has arranged this and the arrangement is the argument. Two verses earlier, a procession. Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth: the great gods of Babylon are being evacuated, strapped to pack animals, and Isaiah watches the carts go past and makes one observation. Your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast. The gods are cargo. They could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. A god you have to carry is a god that leaves the country on the back of a tired donkey.

Then he turns and puts God's sentence directly against it. Borne by me from the belly. Carried from the womb. Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. Four verbs of carrying in one line. The whole point is the direction of the load.

So the objection is not really about timing. Somewhere along the way you became the one who holds it up: the parents, the children, the mortgage, the group that falls apart when you stop organising it. Sleep is not touching this kind of tired.

The warning here is not about burnout. Anything you are carrying, you are carrying because at some level you believe it will not stand without you. That belief is the thing Isaiah is describing when he watches the carts. It is possible to be exhausted in the service of a god you invented, and to be praised for it, and never once to notice which way the weight is going.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 96 is Continued Stedfastly (Acts 2:42).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna