Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
Isaiah 40:28 (NIV)
The One Who Doesn’t Tire
Do you not know? Have you not heard? Isaiah puts those two questions to Jacob and Israel, who had just said this. My way is hidden from the Lord, my cause is disregarded by my God. They’d decided God had lost track of them somewhere along the line, and Isaiah comes back at them with an edge on.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? The same chapter brings out the starry host one by one and calls each of them by name, and because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
He will not grow tired or weary reads like pure comfort. His understanding no one can fathom sounds to me like a door closing, and I’m glad it’s in there. Their complaint was that God had overlooked what was theirs. They get told that nothing of theirs is hidden from him, and that a great deal of his is out of reach for them.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. The burner ticks, the window goes gray, the water comes up to a boil in the same few minutes it always takes, and the person standing over it changes from one morning to the next. Everything Isaiah sets next to the everlasting God wears out.
Nobody gets to the bottom of what he understands, and he never reaches the end of a day. Both of those went to people who were certain he had stopped paying attention.
A Prayer to Remember
You don’t get tired of this. I do, and I’ve asked about the same thing so long that the asking has gone thin. I can’t see into what you’re doing with it and I’ve quit pretending I can, God. Stay with it while I put the kettle on and come back to it tomorrow.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
