“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
There is a woman who lives north of here; up near the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Her name is Margaret Stevenson. She is in her nineties. She used to hike ten or fifteen miles every day. She is a legend in the Smokies. People loved to hike with Margaret because she knew every turn and every trail and every plant and tree by its Latin and colloquial name. A colleague of mine frequently hiked with Margaret and shares his adventures. The first time he joined Margaret on a hike up Mt. LeConte, it was her seventy-fifth. The second time he went was her hundred and twenty-fifth. The third time he hiked up LeConte with Margaret, it was her five-hundredth trip. When Margaret finally stopped hiking, she had climbed Mt. LeConte more than 700 times. Her husband rarely went with her, even in the years before he got cancer.
Once, when my colleague was hiking with Margaret, they came upon what Margaret described as the most unrelenting two-mile ridge in the whole area – two miles up at a steep grade, with no break. They had already hiked six miles on that particular day, and it was very hot. My colleague likes to hike in spurts so he looked at the elderly Margaret and said, “See you later!” He took off at a quick pace and got way ahead of Margaret. At some point, though, my friend found himself lying on his back in half delirium. And as he lay there, a blurred Margaret passed by at her steady pace. He could hear the even “click-click” of her cane as she approached, and with no pity at all in her voice said to him, “One more mile to go, Charles. I’ll see you at the top!” And so she did, arriving well ahead of my colleague and without stopping a single time.
Not long after that hike Charles took with Margaret, her husband died following a long battle with cancer. And because Margaret’s attitude in life is the same as her attitude on the trail, those last few hours with her husband were spent not in sadness or remorse, but in joy in celebration. Because of her daily walk with God, when Margaret says, “I’ll see you at the top!” she means it, for her face is fixed on Christ, her step is steady and sure, and she knows the meaning of Isaiah’s words: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
When Isaiah spoke these words, he was speaking to a people in despair, the Israelites in Babylon. But he speaks a promise that echoes through the ages and is made to all people through Jesus Christ. And the promise is this; if we put our faith in God, then, with God beside us, we will have the ability to meet the challenges of life and, indeed, even to rise above them. My earliest memory of hearing these words from Isaiah goes way back to my early teen years, maybe even preteen. The pastor of my church had just lost his wife after a battle with cancer. She wasn’t even 60 yet. And on his first Sunday back in the pulpit after her death, this was the scripture he preached on. When you grow up hearing a sermon just about every Sunday, it’s hard to remember specific ones, but I’ll never forget that sermon. And the reason I will always remember it is because his grief was real, palatable. Yet, he stood before the congregation and said, “I will not faint. I will not grow weary. I will not fall back or give up. I will not lose hope. Because God is with me and I with God, I will soar on wings like an eagle.”
Needless to say, it makes quite a strong impression, even to a little kid, to know the great grief that someone is experiencing, and then to hear them say, “And yet, because of God, my hope remains.” But this is nothing less than exactly what Isaiah wanted his readers to hear and understand; not only the Israelites in exile, but all people down through the ages. When we put our faith in God, when we grasp God’s power and our powerlessness, our hope will remain in even the darkest of times.
But how easily we forget this, no? We fall into the patterns of life; work and family. We get caught up in the latest project or absorbed in feelings of inadequacy as we rush from place to place, appointment to appointment. If we are constantly self-critical, we remember only the awful things we have done in our lives. If we think we are perfect, we remember only the good things. Then crisis strikes, and the crisis causes us to fall apart because we have forgotten; we have forgotten the God who has been with us every step of the way. It’s what happens when we hear the dreaded “cancer” word or the doctor tells you they found a spot on your lung. Some of us whine. Others of us worry in desperate silence. And like those exiles in Babylon, we wonder whether God hasn’t gone off and left us altogether.
The same thing happens when life is going well, too! Our life is on track, everything is running smoothly, and we so quickly forget that God loves us and wants the best for us. We forget to praise and thank God for the blessings we receive every day. That was Israel’s ongoing problem as well, even with the prophets constantly reminding them who God was and is. The real problem when we forget the God who is Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and Friend, is that the moment we confront trouble, we collapse with anxiety and stress. Too many people are “stressed out” these days because of their lack of trust in God. Isaiah’s words today serve as a sharp reminder of how the God who really does reign over all of nature and history is the same God, the Shepherd, who gently claims, gathers, and carries us. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning?” Have you forgotten? Isaiah is trying to cure the world’s amnesia. “God has not forgotten you,” he says. “Why are you forgetting God?” We worry because we don’t trust God. Trust God more, and we will cure our worry problems.
We’ve all been there haven’t we? We look at the suffering all around us and we wonder why? We feel the sting of grief or pain and we question God’s presence. To some degree, I’m in that place in my own life right now. We call to God in words not unlike Isaiah’s call in the opening of this passage, “Don’t you know, God? Don’t you see what’s going on here?” We cry out to God over and over and over again. Why God? Why me? Why now? How could you let this happen? We feel like God has neglected us, abandoned us. We walk through the darkest valleys and we feel like there is no way out or up, we lose all hope; all because we have simply forgotten.
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding no one can fathom.” God never promised that life would be easy. We have never been guaranteed a stress-free life, absent of the grief and despair that so often plagues us. But God did promise that he would be our God, and we his people, and he fulfilled that promise in Jesus Christ, who came and suffered so that through our suffering we too might live. And after he was raised from the dead, Jesus Christ gave to his disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise of God’s enduring presence in our midst every hour of every day of every year; from the lowest of valleys to the highest mountaintops; so that, if we wait on the Lord, we might climb on with steady endurance and say with complete confidence, “I’ll see you at the top!”
My friends, things are hard enough without us complicating them even more. So let us not forget anymore. Let’s not get to that point of crisis anymore thinking that we are alone in this crazy thing called life. No matter how things may seem, we are never alone. And it is only when we feel weak and helpless that we are vulnerable enough to experience fully the power and grace of God. The God who created the universe, who knit us together in our mother’s womb, stands beside us today and every day. God has never left us and he never will. God has never abandoned us and he never will. God does not faint and grow weary, and he never will. God has never forgotten us, and he never will. So let us never forget the source of our strength; our guide, our comforter, the ever-present help in time of need, the one true God, who holds us in the palm of his hands. “He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.” And if we put our hope in the Lord, he will “renew [our] strength, [we] will soar on wings like eagles, [we] will run and not grow weary, [we] will walk and never faint.”
