Isaiah writes this chapter to a people in exile. People who have been waiting a long time. People who have forgotten what it feels like to not be waiting.

He gives them a sentence that has carried the Church ever since.

Read it slowly.

“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.” - Isaiah 40:31

Notice the order.

Soar. Run. Walk.

Our instinct is to read it as a climax. We assume the eagle-soaring is the peak and the walking is the warm-up. We get it backwards.

Isaiah is going the other way on purpose. He is going DOWN the scale, not up. Soaring is the dramatic bit. Running is the hard bit. Walking is the daily bit.

And the real promise, the one that costs him the most ink to make, is at the end: those who hope in the Lord will walk and not be faint.

Which is actually the hardest of the three.

Anyone can soar for a moment. Anyone can summon a surge of energy for a race they can see the finish of. But walking, every day, day after day, through the long patient season you are in: that is the one most of us cannot do under our own strength. Walking is where exhaustion wins. Walking is where the big spiritual high from Sunday morning cannot help you on a Wednesday afternoon.

And it is the walking that Isaiah promises will be sustained.

Not by your discipline. Not by your fierce determination to just keep going. By hope in the Lord. Which is a word we use loosely, but which in Hebrew is almost always about active trust in a specific God, specifically pointed at him, specifically rested on him. Hope is not optimism. Hope is directional. You hope IN someone.

And when the hope is pointed in the right direction, the walking gets sustained from a source outside of you. The strength you did not generate shows up. The step after the step after the step keeps coming.

The miracle is not that you soar once. The miracle is that you walk and do not fall.

YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY

Stop trying to soar today. Stop trying to summon a feeling. Just walk. Do the next ordinary thing. Make the breakfast. Pray the one-line prayer. Open the Bible to the page you were on. Trust that the strength you need for the next step will arrive by the time your foot lands.

A PRAYER FOR TODAY

Father, I have been trying to soar this week when all you asked me to do was walk. Thank you that the promise was for the walking, which is the hardest of the three. Pour into me the sustained strength I cannot generate for myself. Keep my feet moving. One step. And then the next one. Amen.

If you are in a walking season right now, hit reply and tell me where you are. Nothing fancy. Just honest.

God bless you, my friend.

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