In Plain Sight

Isaiah 40:28–31

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Have you not known? Have you not heard?
• He gives power to the faint
• they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength

Applying the Word to My Life:
Early in my career I was working in IT for a startup. I was completely absorbed in my job — long hours, always moving, always doing more. I wasn't happy, but my instinct was that the answer was more effort. More motion. If I could just push hard enough, things would come together.

Then my manager pulled me aside and told me he thought I should think about becoming a lawyer.

I told him he was wrong. I didn't want to be a lawyer. He didn't argue with me. He just helped me slow down — connected me with some local attorneys, walked me through some conversations, let me sit with it. And somewhere in that process, something settled. I could see that he was right.

What I couldn't get over was this: the clues had been there the whole time. I had done well in speech and debate. I had taken every philosophy class I could find and ended up with a minor in it. I was drawn to logic and rhetoric. None of that was hidden. It was just invisible to me because I was moving too fast to see it.

I couldn't hear what God was asking because I couldn't be still long enough to listen.

Isaiah, like my old manager, is speaking to people who are worn out and feel forgotten — Isaiah's people have been waiting so long they have started to wonder if God sees them at all. And Isaiah's answer is not an argument. It is a reminder. The knowledge is already there. The voice has already been speaking. The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary.

The problem is never that God has gone silent. The problem is that we have gotten too busy, or too absorbed in the motion, to hear Him. And your weakness is not an obstacle to His strength — it is the condition for it. Even the young and strong will eventually fall exhausted, Isaiah says. The ones who receive strength are not the ones who push hardest. They are the ones who wait.

Isaiah gives us three images to help us see this, moving in a direction that might surprise you. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.

Soaring. Running. Walking.

Most of us are waiting for the eagle moment — the dramatic surge, the thing that feels unmistakably like God moving. But Isaiah doesn't end there. He ends on walking. Just walking without collapsing. Which is its own kind of promise for the days when there is nothing dramatic, only the ordinary faithfulness of putting one foot in front of the other.

But there is something else in that sequence worth sitting with. Before you can know whether God is asking you to soar, run, or walk, you have to know His voice. You have to be still enough to hear it. The nine days the disciples spent in the upper room — praying, waiting, not moving — were not wasted time. They were the formation that made them ready to receive what was coming. Without those nine days, would they have been ready for Pentecost? Without the patience to be still, how do you come to recognize the voice of Christ? And if you don't know that voice, how do you know which one He is asking of you right now — the wings, the running, or the walk?

Stability creates the conditions for patience. Patience creates the conditions for stillness. And stillness is how you learn to hear.

My manager gave me something that year that I did not know I needed. He interrupted my motion. He didn't tell me what to do — he helped me slow down long enough to see what was already there. The clues had been present the whole time. The voice had been speaking. I just had to stop moving long enough to hear it.

They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. Not the ones who push hardest. Not the ones who stay in motion. The ones who wait.

The waiting is not the gap before the mission begins. It is the last mile of preparation for it.

My Response for Today:
Today I will name one place where I am moving too fast to hear — and sit still with it long enough to listen.