Dear Amy,
How often do you soar like an eagle?
But they 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.
― Isaiah 40:31
As you journey through each day faithfully serving the Lord, is this your experience? My utmost desire for you is that it is! But as I observe those around me here also faithfully serving the Lord, I don’t see much soaring. Instead I see the opposite⸺weariness and exhaustion.
Why is that? Why is it so hard to experience this? And why was it also not the experience of those to whom these words were originally spoken? For it was not.
There are two reasons. For the first we must consider these words in their original context. They are such familiar words but perhaps the context gets overlooked.
These words were spoken to the Israelites in their exile in Babylon⸺that exile which was the judgment of a holy God upon an unholy people, a people chosen by the Lord but characterised by stubbornly ongoing waywardness and apostasy. It was a just and righteous judgment.
And these words were delivered with a sharp rebuke.
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?”
― Isaiah 40:27
Here is the first reason for absence of soaring: believing that the Lord is ignorant of or indifferent to one’s situation. That is, thinking he either does not know or does not care. We could observe that perhaps the Israelites in their Babylonian exile more than anyone else were justified in thinking this. But no.
Here is the rebuke:
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
― Isaiah 40:28
This is not one who is ignorant of anything!
And what of that insidious presumption of indifference? For this there’s another rebuke. Isaiah has another rebuke for anyone who even flirts with the idea that the Lord is indifferent to their cause. It is a rebuke bound up in his prophecy of the Messiah.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
― Isaiah 53:11
Contemplate the anguish of his soul that Jesus would endure, out of which he would make many to be accounted righteous, bearing their iniquities. He was and is so invested in his rescued ones! We can be sure of that because of the enormous price that he would pay, the cost that he would bear. How could anyone possibly behold that and surmise indifference?
This is only the first of the two reasons that prevent one soaring like an eagle. It must be thoroughly repudiated.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
― Romans 8:31-32
Our Heavenly Father both knows each one of us intimately and cares so tenderly and he will not hold back rescue and blessing beyond imagining. This is the first and foremost enabler for soaring, that we rest confidently in that glorious truth.
Rest confidently in the unfailing love and faithfulness and boundless generosity and kindness of our most wonderful God, Amy, so you may be ready to soar on wings like an eagle! 🙏