With Wings Like Eagles

“But those who wait for the Lord…” (Isaiah 40:31). What exactly does this mean, do you think? How can we wait for the Lord? Or aren’t we always waiting for the Lord? It is our condition of life, really. Everything we do involves waiting for the Lord. We pray and then we wait. We work and then we wait. We get on with our lives, yet all the while, we are waiting to see what will happen – what the Lord will do. We can’t force God’s action on anything. We can’t ensure that God will respond to our requests in any way that is visible to us. So, waiting on the Lord is what it means to live in the world. Right? We’re always waiting.

Take another look at these verses from Isaiah. Maybe we’re in the wrong mode of waiting. Isaiah doesn’t seem to be asking us to wait for God to act. Instead, there seems to be a call to recognize who God is. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Isaiah is asking us to go back to our fundamental understanding of the nature of God. The presence of God. The reality of God. He goes back to the beginning; he looks at the ground beneath our feet. God is a part of all of it. God is the source of all of it—the source of you.

Isaiah is not Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s somewhat nihilistic play. We aren’t invited to become Vladimir and Estragon waiting in vain for the mysterious Godot to arrive and give meaning to their shabby existence. In the play, of course, Godot never comes and proves that waiting is useless and that we should give up and rely on our own resources rather than waiting for something from the outside to come and rescue us. Many of those outside the faith issue a similar indictment against the people of God, saying we are waiting for something that will never come.

But Isaiah isn’t using “wait” in this way. Rather, the prophet is asking us to pay attention to what already is. We are asked to know that God is among us, around us, within us already. Waiting on the Lord, in this case, means trusting, relying on, and being confident in the Lord. We lean into the reality that says God is equipping us as we learn and grow as disciples, as we become those who have heard and those who know. We see God at work all around us, through the encounters and relationships of the people of God. We wait on God as we wait on those in need around us. Remember, Jesus told us that as we serve – feed, tend, visit, invite – others, we are serving him. He is among us, and we are waiting on – serving – him.

There is power in that service. You’ve seen it. You’ve experienced it or heard about it in testimonials or mission reports about how the strength to go beyond ability and endurance came about because of the desire to serve, to be in mission together in community. You’ve heard or felt that mounting up with wings like eagles from those who report that they received more than they gave, that they were blessed more than they blessed others. That’s the strength that comes from waiting on the Lord, being aware of the Lord’s presence as one works and gives and loves. There is always more, an abundance of resources, when the people of God decide to pool together to partner with God in building the kin-dom.

Simon’s mother-in-law is a perfect example of this. She is sick with a fever, but at the touch of Jesus’ hand, she gets us and begins to serve. Did you notice that? She didn’t get up and salute her good health. She didn’t get up and celebrate her good fortune or her personal blessing or the lucky happenstance. No, the only response that made sense to her in that moment was to serve others. She literally began to wait on the Lord after rising from her sickbed. What a witness! How many others saw her example, one wonders. The crowd that gathered, the sick and possessed, the whole city, Mark says, gathered around the door waiting on the Lord. And he cured many, Mark says. Many, but perhaps not all. There is nothing, however, to indicate that some were worthy and some were not. We shouldn’t speculate too much on why all were not healed. Maybe Mark really meant all, but even he had trouble believing it. Was it all? The whole city? Surely not.

Either way, Jesus used the power he had, and then he needed to recharge. Mark says Jesus got up, which means, at some point, he went down. Maybe he fell down, exhausted. Mark’s Jesus strains to do mighty works. He groans. This took something out of him. Maybe he staggered into the recently vacated bed of Simon’s mother-in-law and fell asleep, ad he would on that boat crossing the Sea of Galilee in a storm. But he got up while it was still dark. Was that so he could slip away without being asked for more than he had to give at that moment? Did he carefully step around the whole city that was sleeping on the ground outside the house waiting for him to regain his strength enough to start again? Or had they all gone away, satisfied or not that their waiting was worth it?

It didn’t matter, in a way, because Jesus had a singular focus in the moment: time with God. He knew what it was to wait on the Lord. He knew the effort it required and the focus it needed. He knew that the only way to walk and not faint, to run and not be weary, is to continually take time to be with God, to set aside everything else to fully be present with the source of his strength and direction. He knew his wings would come only when he would wait on the Lord.

And what happened when the disciples showed up? They said, “Everyone is looking for you.” That must have meant that there were more people there, back at the house, wanting Jesus, needing him. But Jesus says, “I’m moving on.” Is that harsh? I’ll bet the ones waiting back at the house thought so. But notice the focus on mission that Jesus expresses to his disciples: “so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came to do.” That is what I came to do. The healing is extra, a sign or pointer to the essence of the message he came to deliver. The message was what he said, but also what – and who – he was. And he needed to be moving on so that more would hear and know and be able to find their place in God’s kingdom, which was breaking out around them.

We might argue that since he had already spoken to those around Simon’s mother-in-law’s house that they had what they needed. They could work to resolve the outstanding issues of the human community together. Just like we, while we are waiting on the Lord, are also called to be a part of the healing of community and the becoming of the people of God by making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. It is not, however, our responsibility to make excuses for what might seem like questionable behavior on Jesus’ part. It is what it is. A part of waiting on the Lord means not getting caught up in what we can’t understand or explain. Instead, we trust that he did what he was called to do. Just as we must do what we are called to do. These are wings we fly with, as the people of God we are becoming. The wings of call, the wings of service, the wings of love that bring us into the kingdom we seek to embrace and promote. So, let us walk and not be wear;, let us run and not faint as we seek to represent the God upon whom we wait.

Verses marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Verses from The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson.