"But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. The will walk and not faint." [Isaiah 40:31]
At the time he said he had never heard of that verse. But while we were traveling around and often moving when we were on active duty in the US Air Force when our kids were little, a friend I had met in Officer Training School had given me a card about 4" by 8" with sticky things on the back and I had put it up on the wall in our hallway.
After the first move the stickiness was no longer working, so I always put it on an eye-level shelf in the medicine cabinet of a bathroom. Tom probably had not really noticed it except when we moved into a new house and I showed it both to him and to his sister, Krista.
Tom said that at Boot Camp that verse had come to be a help in surviving and enduring all that he went through. By the time he left for boot camp, he and a bunch of his high school buddies had been hanging around with some Marine recruiters for around a year. They had worked out and run with them and generally found out from them what it might be like to be a US Marine.
But nothing anyone tells you can compare to the experience, and I was a bit concerned when I brought Tom to the Recruiting Station the day he left for Boot Camp. As he was walking me to the car, he told me that he was determined to do so well that he would be an honor grad at Boot Camp.
I prayed for him, hoping with all my heart that he would not be disappointed.
Honor grads are the best out of around 60 recruits. I told him I knew he would be and prayed for him at the same time.
Four of his buddies from high school enlisted within the same six month period that Tom did. I'm so proud of all of them.
And indeed Tom was an honor grad. The graduation parade passed before him and five others, while many of our family members watched. Krista and I sat under a canopy in the bleachers at the center of the parade ground with the other guests of honor, Marine generals and Navy admirals
Are you living with any kind of uncertainty or difficulty?
Wait on the Lord. He will renew your strength.
Is someone you love seriously ill or close to death?.
Wait on the Lord. He will help you through it.
Are you filled with doubts, cares, worries and fears?
Wait on the Lord. He will assure you, comfort you and deliver you from fear.
Isaiah 40
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales; see, he takes up the isles like fine dust. Lebanon would not provide fuel enough, nor are its animals enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol? —A workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts for it silver chains. As a gift one chooses mulberry wood—wood that will not rot— then seeks out a skilled artisan to set up an image that will not topple. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those 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. (http://bible.oremus.org/)
Kathleen Ware Harris © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com
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