The Power to Endure

ONE OF THE MOST FREQUENTLY QUOTED VERSES IN THE WHOLE OF THE BIBLE IS THAT VERSE IN WHICH THE PROPHET ISAIAH SPEAKS OF THE RESULTS OF “WAITING UPON GOD.” “THEY THAT WAIT UPON THE LORD,” HE SAYS, “SHALL RENEW THEIR STRENGTH.”

And the proof he gives that the people who thus wait upon the Lord have really renewed their strength is that “they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” They shall fly … they shall run … they shall walk. The sequence is not what we should expect. It would have sounded more natural if the order had been reversed, if it had begun with the “walking” and ended with the “flying.” Walking … running … flying, that is how we should have put it if we wanted the sentence to rise to a climax. But, as the prophet puts it, it reads like a descending and diminishing promise, finishing in a kind of anti-climax. As the greatest of the commentators on Isaiah puts it: “Soaring, running, walking; and is not the next stage, a cynic might ask, standing still?”