Better Than Youth

To quote the old man in It’s a Wonderful Life, “Youth is wasted on all the wrong people.”

I recently joined a health club and hired a personal trainer to whip me into shape (no small feat). Through a series of emails, we arranged our first appointment. “I’ll meet you at the entrance,” she wrote. “I have short blond hair and will be wearing a blue t-shirt.”

She sounded intimidatingly perky. I thought it best to warn her. “I’ll be the fat old woman hyperventilating from walking up the front steps,” I wrote back. It wouldn’t be hard to pick me out of the health club crowd.

I wish I was kidding. I wasn’t. As I hauled myself into the door that evening, sure enough, skinny young things were breezing by me, taking the stairs two at a time.

I gaze upon the twenty-somethings at the club with more than a little envy. I admire their grace and agility. But more than anything else, I wish for their energy.

Isaiah wrote that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. And the strength they receive will outshine that of a youth’s.

We can all use more of that kind of energy. So what does it mean to wait upon the Lord?

The Hebrew lexicon defines the word wait in Isaiah 40 as to hope for, expect, or look eagerly for something. It carries the idea of having an expectancy based on knowledge. Waiting is an exercise of faith, fueled by what we know to be true of the Lord. We wait expectantly because we know He is good. Our hope rests in His kind intentions toward us. We expect our circumstances to work out to His glory, because He has promised us it will, and we know God cannot lie.

The people that were the original recipients of Isaiah’s message were living in captivity. They had sinned by turning their hearts away from God and worshipped false idols. God had made good His threat to bring grave consequences for their sin, as foretold by many a prophet. The Babylonian Empire had conquered the Kingdom of Judah. Thousands had been led away from their home to live as strangers in a foreign land. I imagine most captives struggled to find hope, knowing their circumstances were a result of their own sin. Yet God would not allow them to be exiled forever. He sent Isaiah to the people with a message: Put your hope in God.

Isaiah begins this new section of his book (chapters 40-60) with God’s strikingly warm and encouraging words: “Comfort, comfort my people.” Then to comfort them, rather than cite promises, which would cause the people to focus on their circumstances, Isaiah gives the people hope by describing the wonderful characteristics of God. God’s word would endure forever. “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers them close to His heart,” Isaiah assured them.  He then went on to describe God’s mighty power: “The nations are like a drop in a bucket… He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.”

God was worthy of their trust in every way imaginable. The climax to Isaiah’s discourse comes in at the end of the chapter: Those that wait on this great God will renew their strength.

It has been an unusually hot summer here in Maryland. Lawns turned brown, and any plants not watered regularly wilted under the unrelenting onslaught of the hot sun. Rain was non-existent for long stretches at a time. It seemed it would never end.

Then a few days ago, we had a rare August gift—a rainy day. Dark clouds came boiling in from the east and precipitation soaked the area. Flood watches and warnings appeared on the TV screen as the rain pounded the roof outside. Now, a few days later, the benefits of that soaker have revealed themselves in the landscape around us. What was once brown is now a healthy green. Flowers are blooming again, grass is sprouting, and nature in general is breathing a sigh of relief. The rain has brought renewal to the parched and dying.

And that is what waiting on the Lord does for us. When we keep our eyes on Him, filling our thoughts with the amazing things we know to be true about God, we receive the power to continue on. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak… they will soar on wings like eagles… run and not grow weary… walk and not be faint.” Renewal is inevitable when we place our confidence in Him.

And the strength we receive will be superior even to bouncy twenty-somethings.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” Lamentations 3:24, NASB