Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)
Hope in the LORD
31 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 (KJV)
Wait upon the LORD
31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Revelations 21:5
Renewed by Faith (KJV)
5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
The prophet Isaiah teaches us that we will get tired, at times, in our lives, while we are in this world...But the prophet verses gives us hope...That hope is that if we wait upon the LORD, He will renew our strength...And after we get our strength, we can mount up on wings like the beautiful eagle...We will no longer be tired, after the LORD has renewed us...Because He teaches us that He makes all things new...
It seems that today, we are not good at waiting...With all the modern inventions and modern technologies we seem to have grown not to wait...I think we have always wanted to talk to our family and friends...We have always wanted current information...We always liked to listen to our favorite songs...And, of course, we have always liked food, and wanted our favorite foods as soon as they were cooked...We used to have phones and radios, where we could get much of our daily information...Then it moved to television sets, then on to computers...We started getting fast food in the 1960's...We then had microwaves for faster food...Now we even have fast food -for fast food through drive through services...We have cell phones, so we don't have to wait to receive a call from someone, or we do not have to wait to call someone, when we get home to our now antiquated land line...In fact, the cell phone can give us almost instant news, and with the newest cell phones, we do not have to wait for the things like we used to...We can watch TV, listen to music, and get news on our phone...Waiting has changed...Waiting it seems in a strange way, is becoming antiquated...
What is interesting about this fast food environment, is that life in itself is a many series of waiting and hoping...We wait to get to go to school when we are young...Then we wait for our summer vacations...Then we can't wait, till we can become a teenager...Then we wait until we can drive a car...Then we can't wait until we graduate...Then we can't wait either to get a new job, or go to college...Then after working many years, people seem can't wait to retire...Then after all these period from one waiting period to the next, we have gotten much older...Does a modern world of impatiently waiting, a better world?...
When we read the old King James Version (KJV) of the Book of Isaiah, we see that the older version teaches us that we must wait upon the LORD, sometimes when we are tired...The interpreters and translators of the New International Version (NIV), changes the word wait to the word hope...Although I do not think this changes the meaning of Isaiah's writing, to the NIV translators hope means to wait...There is waiting in our hoping...We must be better at waiting...When we get better at waiting, we will get better at hope...And when we are better at hoping in the LORD, we will get better in our faith...
Let us hope from our waiting and hoping that we have gained some wisdom or knowledge...St. Peter teaches that we must learn to move from the knowledge we gain to better self control...We must move from self control to patience...We must move from patience to Godliness (2 Peter 1:16)...
God makes us wait...God also wants us to never lose hope...There are many stories of waiting in the Bible...Abraham and Sarah had to wait many years for their child, Isaac...The story of Jacob and Rachel is a love story of waiting...The Israeli people were in Egypt for four hundred years...They were waiting on the LORD to take them to the Promised Land...Generations they had to wait...When the LORD and Moses, were leaving Egypt, with His people, it would take forty years to get to Egypt...It did not have to take that long to get to the Promised Land, but that is what God wanted it to take...As we read through the stories of waiting that God gives us, we even had to wait on our Messiah that Moses wrote about in Deuteronomy 18:18...
God makes us wait for a reason...Jesus in His teachings talks of two worlds...This world and the kingdom of God are the two worlds He talks about...He teaches about this world and its journey to the next, the kingdom of heaven...The journey, and wait on earth is more than anything else, is getting Jesus in our lives...His waiting stories about the kingdom of God, teach us about the Truth...Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)...He is the reason we wait, and the reason we must wait...Having our hearts and hope on heaven, give us strength knowing the wait is for our LORD Jesus Christ...