Ever thought about how cool it would be, to be able to fly? And I don’t mean with the aid of one of those noisy mechanical contraptions we call airplanes. I mean you with just your body, soaring above the earth; you, banking over the forests; you skimming over the rivers; you darting through the canyons; you breathing deeply in the fresh air of free and effortless flight! And for those of you who have fear of heights and find what I’m suggesting to be fear inducing, just imagine if you had no such fear. You could come too.
Almost everybody has wondered what it would be like to fly, If not at the present, then at least when you were a kid you probably thought about it. You’ve probably also dreamed about it. But then with those kind of dreams, there is always that rude awakening when you land in your bed and discover that you are still a prisoner of gravity.
And as you find your way to the bathroom, shaking off the night, you remember the weight you must bear. And it’s not just gravity that seems to be holding you down, but everything. For as your mind comes back on line and you think about the things that lie behind and lie ahead, your shoulders visibly slump as if you were actually carrying something. Truth is, you are carrying something. There are burdens that bring there own gravity to life, burdens that don’t show up on bathroom scale. But you can still detect them. You can detect them in your face made weary by what it has endured. You can detect them in eyes made sad by what they have seen.
Perhaps that’s why we adults don’t think about flying as much as children do. We carry a lot of cargo after all. Too much cargo to take off. If you are at all aware of what’s going on in the world, you can’t help but feel this. I mean, just watch the national news. The world is pretty screwed up and if you listen to the news, it doesn’t seem like its going to get any better. This weighs us down.
And then there are work issues. Who knows, is the company that you work for going be around in a year or so? Is some new CEO who doesn’t even know you and what you are able to do going to decide that he could please his stockholders by firing you? This weighs you down. Or maybe you own your own business and you wonder if you’ve thought about everything and planned for every contingency. And you do care about those who work for you, and you find it incredibly hard to make decisions that may effect those who work for you. And this weighs you down.
And then there’s your family. The people you love. You see your parents getting older; perhaps becoming infirm. You see your children struggling in this or that. Perhaps you’ve hit a rough patch in your marriage. When you were a kid you don’t remember that love was so difficult and so demanding. But that’s because you were always on the receiving end of it. And now you are called to be the one who gives it; called to be the one who loves. This too can weigh you down
So thoughts of Flying? Nah! Not anymore! Life is way too heavy to dally with such things.” And yet, what does the text say? “....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.” Hmmm. Perhaps we spoke too soon! The Lord says that we can “soar on wings like eagles!” I don’t know about you, but he’s got my attention! He is suggesting that there is a way to overcome the gravity of our lives, a way to lighten our loads, a way rise above it all. Has he got your attention? Let’s go then, Let’s figure out how this can be.
The prophet Isaiah was writing to the people of Israel during a time, when they felt like their strength was sapped and they had no hope. Like us, they had concerns about the national news. The news for them was not too good. The dreadful assyrians, a constant threat, were breathing down their necks, and later it would be the Babylonians, those star-worshipping captors who would take them all away to live in exhile. As they thought about all the stuff that was happening around them, they were overcome by the gravity of it all.
And they were saying things too. Isaiah actually quotes them. They were saying “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God.” In other words “God doesn’t really care about me!” “How can he?” Look at all this bad and difficult stuff that is happening all around us.” “He’s not really in charge of things!”
You see what was happening here? They began to see their problems as being bigger than God himself. It didn’t even cross their minds that the Lord of all might have something to say about their problems. They had made a subtle exchange over the years. They exchanged their faith in God for their own knowledge of the ways of the world. And we do the exact same thing! We have this tendancy to take different areas of our lives and exclude the possiblity that God has something to say about it. “Let’s see, my work, hmm, no that’s not God’s area, business no he has nothing to say about that. Finances, naw. My love life, no God doesn’t know anything about that, that’s my area.” We systematically exclude God from different aspects of our lives. We imagine ourselves in complete control of these things. And it works okay for a time. But then we begin to feel the weight. Our blood pressure rises. We toss and turn. We get sick. Our hearts get heavy. Our lives are embittered. And we come to the realization that if we are truly in charge of all this stuff that we are in a world of hurt.
That’s where Israel was at the time that Isaiah wrote. And then they had the gall to say that God wasn’t there for them; that he didn’t care about them; that he was irrelvent to their situation. My word they were a piece of work. They had systematically made him irrelevent with their faithless behavior and attitudes and now they accuse him of not carrying? Has there been a little bit of that going on in you? Are you systematically making God irrelevent in your life? Have you been shutting him out? Are you trying to be your own Lord? Not very easy is it? That’s because it is something that you were never meant be.
To Israel and to us, the Prophet says “Do you now know? Have you not heard? .... He, (namely God) sits enthroned above the circle of the earth. .... And its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in.” In other words, God created everything and is above everything and rules everything. In otherwords, “look beyond the stuff of the world and the stuff of your life” and see the one who is behind it all and indeed also above it all.” You are not in charge of the present, God is! You are not in charge of the future, God is! God is in charge! God is the Lord! But there’s even more. Not only is he in charge, but he also loves you with a perfect love so he can be trusted completely.
How do we know that he loves us? To the Israelites, Isaiah explained it in this way: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And the government will be upon his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting father, Prince of peace.” (Isaiah 9) And of course, we know that this child who was born and Son who was given is Christ Jesus. We know that he established his kingdom by going to the cross to die for all of our sins. He didn’t have to do that. He wanted to do that. He wanted to that because he loved us and had compassion on us as he saw us dragging our feet and struggling under the gravity of our own lives. He saw the way we had fooled ourselves into thinking that we were the ones who were in charge of everything in our lives. He saw what it was doing to us. He sees what it is doing to you. And he says to you “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden and i will give you rest”. The jig is up. You have not been, nor can you ever be the Lord of your own life. Offer that sinful delusion up to your loving Lord Jesus. Be forgiven. Be renewed. Be strengthened.
Now Listen to Isaiah once again: “Do you not Know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God,....He will not grow tired and weary and his understanding no one can fathom.” “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. “ “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.”
God wants you to soar on wings like Eagles. And the way it happens is through the changing of perspective. When you begin to entrust your life to him instead of yourself your perspective is changed. Everything in your life is dwarfed in comparison to the largeness and authority of the Lord. He is bigger than any problem you might face. “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth”. And as you learn to trust him, you begin to see things from his perspective. He draws you upward in faith, so that you begin to get a bird’s eye view of things, or more correctly, a God’s eye view.
Yeah, You’ll still have problems, you’ll still have great challenges, to face , all of us will until the day we die, but you will not face them alone. The Lord will face them with you. And that can make all the difference. That is the strength you need to continue. “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.” So the stuff of dreams and childhood fantasy is really not too far off of the mark. There is a way to escape the gravity of life. Find your hope in the Lord and his Christ AMEN
