How Does God Help in Times of Trouble Isaiah 40:27-31
Fifth Sunday After Epiphany
February 9, 2003
One of the most perceptive Christian writers of the 20th century was C. S. Lewis. Lewis was a bachelor until his late fifties and then married Joy Davidman, a recent convert to the Christian faith. A short time after their marriage, Joy Davidman was diagnosed with having cancer, and Lewis had to watch with agony as his bride slowly died before his eyes. About a month after her funeral, Lewis began to jot down some of his thoughts in the back of old notebooks, and just before his own death, these were put together and published in a little book titled, A Grief Observed. It is one of the most poignant documents of its kind. At the beginning of the book, Lewis makes no effort to hide his profound disappointment in his religion. What had occurred in the depths of his grief was not at all what he had expected. The early pages literally reek with disillusionment that bordered on despair. However, as he continues to work through the grief process, Lewis began to realize that the problem was not so much with God as with himself. It was his expectations, not the experiences themselves, that lay at the bottom of the problem. He discovered what is always the secret of disillusionment: it is the offspring of illusion. More often than not, we experience disillusionment because we have constructed the wrong kind of expectations. Rarely is what we experience what we anticipate. Lewis ends his book on a much brighter note than marks its beginning.
Some years ago, I had an occasion to remember this when a friend of mine asked me abruptly, “Does God really help a person in trouble?” It was a time for me, like Lewis, when I was experiencing a trying time wondering if my faith would sustain me. I was physically exhausted, emotionally dissipated, grieving like I had never grieved before, and also challenging my faith like never before. I didn’t have an answer for my friend that day, but it set me on a journey for an answer. I had preached for years that God helped people in times of trouble, but then I doubted if that were true for me. Thankfully, I can honestly say today that God does help people in trouble. Answering that question, however, led me to another question: “How does God help a person in trouble?”
It was also during this same time frame that I was preached the greatest sermon I have ever heard. The Minister of Word and Sacrament was my mother. I was literally in a quagmire. If I did this, I was damned. If I did that, I was damned. As I gave an account of my messy life to my parents, it was then that these words came blaring out of my mother’s mouth: “David, wait! Wait on the Lord!” So, it has been with those words that I began my search to find the answer to the question, “How does God help us in trouble?”
First, let me say that I have not found a simple answer to that question. It would be easy for me to mislead you with a simple answer which would only lead you to another disappointment and set you up for disillusionment. But I do believe that Isaiah 40:27-31 comes as close to any passage in scripture to giving a comprehensive understanding of how God helps us in trouble.
The passage begins with a specific promise: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Isaiah is talking about the people who take God seriously, who open their lives to Him. To “wait” on God means to look to Him and to depend upon Him. The root word means to “stretch around” much like a smaller cord stretches around a larger one to benefit from the larger cord’s strength. If we depend on God, we will be given strength. We will experience a supplement of power not ours before. However, on the heels of this promise, Isaiah goes on to describe three different ways this help can come to people. These distinctions are crucial, for they will safeguard us against what happened to Lewis, expecting one thing and then experiencing something different.
First, he speaks of the ecstacy of deliverance - the experience of “rising up with wings as eagles.” He is speaking of those times in life when God is obvious, when God’s life flows into our lives which leads to exuberance and abandon and celebration. This experience is well known in Biblical religion. There is a hint of this in the nature of God Himself in the creation story. God is looking out over all He had created and finds it “very good.” He takes a day off simply to celebrate the wonder of the world.
It is also the experience of many when God has intervened directly in their lives - when God has altered circumstances. It is the emotion that we see in the leper when Jesus says to him, “Be healed,” and new skin grows back where there was once diseased cells. Like the leper, in our life when God does something for us, we soar like eagles with the wind of God’s spirit. It is also the experience that we tend to ask God for first - for him to rescue us, to intervene. It is our baby instinct. We cry to God for results.
While God does do things for us to strengthen us, this is not the only way God gives strength to people. A sure formula for disillusionment is when we conclude: “If there is no ecstacy, God is not with us.” There are experiences in life when ecstacy is not only impossible, it is inappropriate.
Second, he speaks of energy that comes for activism - the experience of running and not growing weary. It is the inspiration to rise to the occasion and to tackle some task that needs to be done, when we are moved to doing something to correct the trouble we are in. Sometimes God’s spirit strengthens us to problem solve, to see the solution that is as plain as the nose on our face. It is to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps with God’s help.
Jane Adams was a pioneer in the field of American social work. A wealthy young woman, she could not ignore the ravages the industrial and urban world were having on families, especially children. She said that “she was religiously moved to be disturbed” about the slums of Chicago. As she prayed and pondered over the problem, she felt two questions being addressed to her: “If not you, who? If not now, when?” As she answered those questions for herself, she became a legendary helper to countless families and children in the slums of Chicago. Jane Adams’ experience was of God working with her, realizing that many times we can be involved in the answer to our own prayers.
Abraham had been the sexton of his synagogue for over thirty years when he suddenly told the Rabbi that he quit. The Rabbi was totally taken aback by Abraham’s sudden resignation. “Why, Abraham? After all these years, why now? Is there anything I can say or do to convince you to reconsider?”
Abraham told the Rabbi that he had prayed to God for several years for him to win the lottery. After all these years, I have yet to win the first dollar. So, “I quit!”
Grasping for straws, and since it was Friday, the Rabbi convinced Abraham to wait past Sabbath before he made his final decision. He further offered that if Abraham would come to synagogue early on Sabbath, he would pray with him for God to let him win the lottery.
So, Abraham arrived early for synagogue and the Rabbi prayed with Abraham that he would win the lottery when a voice thundered from the heavens, “Abraham, I’ve told you again and again, you have to buy a ticket!”
There are troubled times when there is something that we can do to help us out of trouble, and to see a solution with clarity is a way that God gives us strength, but there are still times when God does not change the circumstance and our own activism will not change the situation. If we don’t have any bootstraps, how can we pull ourselves up by them?
Third, he speaks of the gift of endurance - the strength “to walk and not faint.” It is the experience of the Apostle Paul when he writes about his thorn in the flesh. Paul says that he asks God three times to remove his thorn in the flesh and God responded, “My grace is sufficient for you.” This gift of strength is God’s quietest and most incredible work in our lives - the grace to endure.
John Claypool shares the experience of his daughter’s sickness and eventual death from Leukemia. He relates that one day the nurse was trying to draw blood from Laura Lou, and she was crying, “Please, Daddy make them stop!” Her mother, Ann, fainted, and John says that something inside of him said, “Run! Run Away!” But for some reason he didn’t run. In that moment he was convinced that it was God’s grace that helped him endure.
I have told you about the Lattimores before. They are some friends of ours from South Pittsburg. When Valerie, their daughter, was married, I stood in the church and watched Bob give his daughter away in marriage, I could not help but reflect on what had happened to this family just two years before. Their son, Robert, a strong, vibrant, 24 year old, died of a rare cancer called Osteo Sarcoma. About a year before his death, he was diagnosed, and I remember that we all were so setback by it that we naturally turned to God and asked for his healing power in Robert’s life - but that did not happen. There was no ecstacy, no deliverance, no soaring like eagles.
Robert went to M. D. Anderson Medical Center in Houston, and with the help of their noted doctors, he received the best treatment that the world knew to give. Our prayers were that the harsh treatment would work, and that God would use the gifted doctors and their valuable research and Robert would survive. With some hope that our prayers had been answered, the tumor shrank, and a bit of normality came back to Robert’s life with a few limitations. But against hope, the tumor grew, and the cancer spread throughout his body.
Our prayers then changed again, “God give us strength and courage to make the best of this situation.” In the early morning hours of October, 1999, Robert died.
At the funeral home later that morning, I was talking with Bob and asked him how he was doing. He said to me a remarkable thing. He said, “This is easy compared to the last year. At least, now we know what we are facing.”
So, as I saw Bob walk Valerie down the aisle, and Jane, her mother, standing waiting for her beautiful daughter, I thought that one could look long and far, and not find a happier, more peaceful trio than they are. It didn’t come without heartache and travail, nor did it come from their own resources. I am convinced, as they are, that the ability to endure is purely gift.
Again, last year, tragedy struck the family again. Bob died. Again, true to form, Jane and Valerie waited on God. Hear, then the promise: there is help to be had from God! Like the Lattimores, you can count on it! It may take the form of ecstacy, when you “mount up with wings as eagles.” It may come to you as renewed energy, when you “run and are not weary.” Or then again, it may simply and quietly come as strength to “walk and not faint.” The last one may seem like a little thing, but when you are “up against it” and have no occasion to soar and no room to run, believe me, it is not. In that moment, the gift of endurance and patience becomes utterly important - just to stay on your feet and not give up.
I can say with honest experience that if you are willing to “wait on the Lord” and accept this gift, you will not be disappointed. You may not be able to soar or even to run, but to walk and not faint - it will be given!
And there are times, my friends, when that is not only enough, it is everything!
Pastoral Prayer
Father, we are glad we belong to you, and we remember where you have found us.
We’re glad that you didn’t check our purity level when you accepted us, and you still don’t. You checked Jesus, and he is perfect, and we are covered!
Father, you know each of us in this place. You know the things that frighten us. You know the insecurities we try to hide. You know the fears and the loneliness when we feel like a child on the outside of house, throwing rocks because no one will let us in.
Father, you know the demons that come in the middle of night. Financial worries, marital woes, family crises and, yes, national pain and angst that affect each of us.
But, we are here. Here because coming before you is really all we have - everything thing else is illusion. Meet us in this place. May we sense the soft sound of your spirit in this room and in our lives.
Amen.
