they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
—Isaiah 40:27-31 (ESV)
I think the hardest thing about the Christian life is trusting God. Maybe I’m overgeneralizing here, but at least for a lot of people, this seems to be true. Certainly if you look at the history of Israel’s relationship to God in the Old Testament, their failure to trust God was at the root of many if not all of their corporate sins—time and again, they thought they needed the help of other gods to achieve their best life then, or they preferred to trust in their own military and diplomatic maneuvers to defeat their enemies. When things didn’t go well for them, though, they were certainly quick enough to blame God for that, whether they’d been putting their trust in him to deal with their problems or not.Thus, for instance, in Isaiah 40—when the prophet has just announced the deliverance of God, bringing his people back from exile—the response we hear isn’t gratitude but a skeptical whine: “God isn’t helping us; he can’t see what’s happening to us, and he doesn’t care that we aren’t getting the justice we deserve.” You can’t blame the prophet for his disbelief and irritation as he asks, “Don’t you get it? Are you really that dense?” God has all power over all creation, because he made all of it, and he knows everything that happens; indeed, he rules through everything that happens. In his power, in his character, in all of who he is, God is so far above anything we human beings can imagine as to be completely incomparable, completely beyond our ability to describe; as such, he’s also completely beyond our ability, or the ability of our enemies, to baffle, thwart, or evade. He raises up the powers of the earth, and then he brings them to nothing, as he will. Yes, he intends to deliver his people, and yes, he has the ability to do so any time and in any way he chooses. What is needed is for his people—for them; for us—to trust him.We need to trust him, because only he can see the right timing, and because we simply lack the ability to do anywhere near as well, nevermind any better. Our own strength is limited; even the best of us wear out and falter. Even a guy like Michael Phelps can only keep going for so long before he drops from exhaustion. But God says that if we will trust him, wait for him, depend on him, rather than putting our trust in our own strength and our own plans, that he will give us the strength and the endurance we need to do what he calls us to do. We will be able to fly as eagles fly—not by working hard flapping their wings, but by stretching out their wings and letting the wind carry them; we will be able to keep going through the weary times, because when our strength runs out, he will renew us, if we wait on him.This is important for us to remember as a nation, as we enter a new year in very uncertain circumstances; as we consider Iran, and terrorists, and the global economic situation, we need to remember what Isaiah tells us: surely all these problems compared to God are like the bead of condensation that slides down your can of soda, or the bit of dust that settles on the scale when you’re weighing the produce. Yes, economic trends could make our lives much less comfortable than we’ve been used to, and yes, al’Qaeda could hurt our country badly; but though God may permit bad things to happen to us, they will only happen when he permits them, and he will continue to work through them just as he works through the good things we see in life. In all things, well and ill, God is in control and at work to accomplish his purposes.(Excerpted, edited, from “The Incomparable God”)