Even the Young Ones Are Tired

She read it in a waiting room, which is where most people read anything now, out of a book somebody had left.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.

She read it twice, and the second time out loud, quietly, and the man opposite looked up and she pretended to cough.

She is sixty two.

Here is where she was before the waiting room, and she had been there about two years. She had concluded, without any drama, that she is out of energy for good. Not ill. She has had the checks and there is nothing to find, and her doctor has been decent about it and has said the word deconditioning, which she has looked up and does not entirely accept.

What she means is this. There used to be a reserve. There was a thing at the bottom of her that she could reach for at half past four in the afternoon, and it would be there, and she has not been able to find it since about her fifty ninth birthday.

She has stopped saying yes to things. She has stopped starting things in the evening. She said no to a weekend in June and the reason she gave was not the true one.

And what she has been carrying, underneath all of the practical adjustments, is a single sentence that she has never said to anybody: this is what the rest of it is going to be like.

And then a book in a waiting room says the young ones fall down too.

The light at four in her living room comes across the low table and onto the books and she has been sitting there since she got back thinking about one clause.

The youths faint too

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally promises. God will give you your strength back. You will run and not be weary. I am not going to say either. Nobody talking to a woman of sixty two about God has been authorized to schedule an energy level, and a promise of one that does not land will confirm the sentence she is already carrying.

Isaiah 40 ends with the verse everybody knows, and the verse before it is the one nobody quotes: Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall (Isaiah 40:30).

It is a strange thing to put there. Isaiah is about to say that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, and the sentence he chooses to set that up with is a flat statement that the strongest people alive run out.

Not may run out. Shall faint. Shall utterly fall, which is a heavier phrase than anything he says about the old.

You have not run out of something everybody else still has. That is not me reading against the passage; Isaiah 40:30 says the youths faint and the young men utterly fall, and the Holy Spirit who inspired that line put it immediately before the promise so that nobody would read their own exhaustion as a personal fault.

And now the verse she knows: 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 (Isaiah 40:31).

Read the verb in the middle of it. Renew. Not maintain, not preserve, not conserve. Renewal is a thing that happens to something which has already run out, which means the running out is assumed by the promise rather than excluded from it.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength.Isaiah 40:30-31

Waiting is not resting

Let me be exact about the word she is going to trip over, because everybody does.

They that wait upon the Lord. That does not mean sitting still until something changes. The Hebrew behind it carries the sense of binding together, of twisting like the strands of a rope, and the picture is of attachment rather than of a line of people waiting.

Which is the whole subject of this site said in another language. The branch does not generate. It is bound in, and what comes up through it is not its own.

You have been attached through two years of having nothing at half past four. John 15:4 makes abiding a place rather than a performance, and the Spirit is what comes up through it; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) is not measuring the sap by what a woman can feel at four in the afternoon.

This is yours right now, with a blanket over your knees: a renewal that begins where the reserve ends. Isaiah 40:31 uses the word renew, which presupposes the emptiness rather than denying it; the Spirit who inspired that verse put the fainting of the young men in the sentence before on purpose.

The sentence about the rest of it

Now the thing she has never said out loud, because that is the actual subject.

This is what the rest of it is going to be like. That is not a description of an energy level. It is a forecast about a whole remaining life, made at sixty two, on the evidence of two years, by somebody with no way of knowing.

And the forecast is doing more than the tiredness is. The tiredness makes her sit down at four. The forecast makes her stop saying yes in June.

You were never in possession of information about the rest of it. James 4:14 says you do not know what shall be on the morrow, and that is stated as a limit on everybody rather than as a warning to the pessimistic; the Holy Spirit who inspired that line took the forecasting business away from all of us.

Fruit is not output, and a low afternoon is where the difference lands. Output is what a person gets done in a day, and hers has gone down, and that is real and it is not being argued with here. Fruit is what grows on a woman who is still in the chair and still attached, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, at any energy level, in any decade.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. In the ten minutes at four when there is nothing left anyway, tell Him one true thing about being tired, with nothing asked for and no strength requested. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody grades that.