The path through the grove is stony and the trees are older than anybody's grandfather and at this hour the light comes sideways through them and turns the dust gold.
They walk out at first light with the baskets, four or five of them, and it takes as long as it takes.
He is fifty-seven.
Three years of a tiredness that is not tiredness. He has explained it badly to eleven people. It is not sleepiness and it is not laziness and it is not sadness, and the nearest he has got is that somebody has moved his batteries into a different body and forgot to tell him.
And people quote the verse at him. Constantly. It is the kindest verse in the Bible and it arrives about twice a month.
They shall mount up with wings as eagles.
He knows it is well meant. He also knows what it does, because he has had three years of it. It arrives as a description of a person he is not, and the gap between the man in the verse and the man on the path is the exact measure of his failure, and so a verse about God has become, twice a month, a small reminder that he is not doing it right.
If somebody has quoted the eagles at you, you know they were trying to lift you, and you know you said amen.
He gives power to the faint, and faint is the word
The weight first and whole, because on this site the honest paragraph comes before the good one and it never gets shortened.
What this costs is not the tiredness that is not tiredness, though that costs the mornings. It is that the encouragement has become the accusation. It costs you a verse, which is a real theft. It costs eleven bad explanations and the small pause after each one. It costs the baskets, in the sense that you go out with them and you are counting. And it costs you a comparison twice a month between yourself and a man with wings, which nobody in the conversation knows they are running.
I am not calling that small and I am not putting it beside anybody else's, because on this site there is no ranking of what people carry and there never will be. Any word from God that needs your three years made lighter first is not one Scripture speaks and not one the Holy Spirit has ever carried.
And plainly, before we go on: if the tiredness has taken you somewhere darker, as far as thinking the walk out would be quicker without you on it, tell one living person today. Your doctor, one of the four who walk out with you, or a crisis line where you live, 988 by call or text in the United States and its equivalent wherever you are. Scripture asks no man to hold that alone, and the Holy Spirit has always moved through people who slow down on a stony path and do not mention it.
Now, Isaiah 40, and read the two lines that come before the one everybody quotes.
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.Isaiah 40:29-31
He giveth power to the faint.
That is the first line of the passage and it is almost never quoted. And look at who it is addressed to. Not the strong. Not the ones who are managing. The faint, and then, in the parallel line, them that have no might, which is not a poetic flourish, it is the plainest possible way of saying: people with nothing left.
You are named in the first line of that passage by the exact word for your condition. Isaiah 40:29 says He gives power to the faint, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the half nobody quotes and lays it on a stony path at first light.
Now the line after it, which is stranger and which almost nobody has noticed. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.
The prophet goes out of his way to say that the strongest people available also run out. He is dismantling, in advance, the very comparison that has been running in your head for three years. The passage is not contrasting tired people with untired people. It says everybody in the human category faints, including the ones who look like they do not.
You have a passage that refuses to compare you with anybody, because it says the strongest fall too. That is written into Isaiah 40:30, and His Spirit in you is the one who makes an old prophet's demolition land on a man with a basket.
Now let me be exact about what this does not say, because three years of well meant quotations have already been made on that path.
It does not promise you the strength back. It does not say when, and it does not say in this life, and I am not going to convert renew into a prediction about your Tuesdays, because what God does with your body is His, in His own way.
And the renewal it describes is not offered as a trade. Nothing in that passage says the tiredness is good for you or that it is a fair exchange for something better. This site does not do that, and Isaiah does not either. He names the faintness, then names what God gives, and never once suggests the first is worth having for the sake of the second.
And it does not tell you the people quoting it are wrong. They are quoting a true verse warmly. They are quoting the last line of it, which is the one on the posters, and this site is not going to prosecute anybody for reaching for the famous half.
You were never outside the passage; you were only outside the half that gets quoted. Scripture opens it by naming the faint, and the same Spirit who inspired it is the one who carries the whole thing into a grove at first light.
Isaiah 40:29 says God gives power to the faint and increases strength to them that have no might, and verse thirty says even the young men fall, and the Holy Spirit in you is the guarantee that the first line is addressed to you.
Look at what that leaves standing. It leaves three years of a tiredness with no good name. It leaves the walk out with the baskets and however long it takes, and I am promising you nothing about your strength, because I would rather hand you a sentence that is still true in the fourth year than a warm one that is not true on this path.
But it gives you the beginning of the passage. For three years you have been receiving the end of it as a description of a person you are not, and the opening line names your actual condition and says that is who the giving is for. And the middle line says the strongest people fall too, so the comparison that has been costing you twice a month is one the prophet had already refused.
You are addressed as the faint, and faint is the word in the text. The word says He giveth power to the faint, and the Holy Spirit is the deposit on a renewing that was never offered as a trade for the tiredness.
So walk out with them. It takes as long as it takes, and the light comes sideways through trees older than anybody's grandfather, and the first line of that verse has your name in it.
Declare this over yourself
This renewing is yours in Christ and it is not a trade for the tiredness, and it is not compensation for anything. What God does about your strength is His to decide, in His own way, and nothing below asks Him for a date or predicts one. Isaiah 40:29-31 is the ground under these three lines, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a man the half of the passage nobody quotes.
- Half a verse that keeps arriving without its first line, you are true and you have no authority to be a description of a man I am not. Scripture opens that passage with power to the faint and to them that have no might. Come at me twice a month; the first line has my condition in it.
- Comparison between me and a man with wings, you are put off this path in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries a whole passage rather than a famous half, so Isaiah says the young men utterly fall and refused that comparison before I was born. Three years of saying amen; the giving is aimed at the faint.
- Father, You give power to the faint, and You named the condition before You named the gift. I am saying one thing that is truer of me now than it was five years ago, and it is almost nothing, and it is not nothing. The light comes sideways through these trees; the renewing is additional and it was never an exchange.
Isaiah 40:29-31
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