Do Not Grow Weary

A Strange Kind of Strength

“…they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.”

This became one of my life verses at the very end of my college career, amidst the stress of graduating, commissioning, and moving from Boston to Florida. There was so much happening, so many things to do, so many things to learn. In the space of three weeks, I had five different addresses (not counting the hotels in between). It was insane. And this verse kept popping up.

I didn’t like the sound of it at all.

It would be a much friendlier verse if it said, “the Lord shall be with them, and they shall remain strong.” But it doesn’t say that. It says they’re waiting – which means that the rescue, the relief, the happy ending hasn’t come yet. And it says they “renew their strength” – which means that first, their strength has to be depleted. The mounting up on wings comes later; first comes the struggling, the weakness, the waiting.

This seemed to me, in the midst of all my struggles, to be a very unencouraging sort of strength. I would prefer a Superman-esque power, one that would knock all my problems aside without breaking a sweat. But far more often, God gives me a Captain America-esque power – that is, the power to get weighed down and knocked over again and again and again, and still be able to take more. That is the kind of strength this passage promises. Yay?

Nor does the New Testament change things. God never promises we won’t be pressured, only that we won’t be crushed. He doesn’t promise that we won’t be persecuted, only that we won’t be abandoned. He doesn’t promise that we won’t be struck down, only that we won’t be destroyed. He doesn’t promise that there won’t be mourning, only that there will be comfort.

The Grind

Over time, I have come to take comfort in these verses that once put me on edge.  After graduation, my life became no less stressful. I still spend weeks continually exhausted, never quite catching up with my sleep debt or my to-do list. When I was in high school, I remember talking to one of my instructors before Christmas break.

“It’s almost over!” I told him.

“It’s never over,” he said. And he was right. I used to think I would come to some plateau where my life would level out. Time and again, my blogs from college say, “I think things are about to settle down.” But they never did.

That is not to say my life isn’t balanced, but I don’t balance the way a figurine balances on a shelf. I have the balance of a top: fragile, forever spinning on a single point. If I stop moving, things will fall apart. They are only in balance as long as I keep going.

Do Not Grow Weary

Paul tells us, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” This is a command; it does not refer to whether I feel tired, but rather to whether I react to that tiredness by becoming lazy and selfish and bitter. We all get knocked down sometimes. The command is not to stay upright. The command is to continue getting back up again. If we do, God will give us the strength to continue. But we have to decide.

Why does God make us decide? If he wanted to, he could give us the Superman-esque power to vanquish all our problems in a moment. We could all live charmed lives. Why must we instead trod these weary paths, choosing to get up over and over and over again? Why can’t we reap the reward now?

I think it is because we are not yet ready to receive it. If everything in my life had been easy, I would not be who I am today. Research has shown that past hardship correlates with future success. God doesn’t allow hardship in our lives because he needs it; he allows it because we need it. It is making us into the sort of people we were meant to be.

Preparing for Glory

When I was little, my favorite Christmas carol was “Away in a Manger.” When I hear it sung, the last line is usually, “and take us to Heaven to live with Thee there.” But when I was growing up, I sang “and fit us for Heaven to live with Thee there,” and I still prefer it that way. The second task is the much harder one.*

The purpose of this life is to prepare us for the next. It is the suffering of this life that produces that far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory we have been promised; we cannot have the second without the first. To come to the Father is to follow Christ, and to follow Christ is to take up a cross. Only when we have taken part in his death can we take part in his resurrection.

And that is my very long way of saying that if you’re as exhausted as I am, hang in there! It’s worth it!

*In fact, I suspect that if the people in Hell were allowed into Heaven, they would ask to return to Hell. Having chosen over and over to reject the sovereignty of God and focus on themselves above all, they might find the discomfort of a place where God’s glory and sovereignty overwhelm everything, and they are themselves as nothing, more unbearable than hellfire.

“5/52 Bennie” by TimothyJ is licensed under CC BY 2.0