Wait.

This season of Epiphany has invited us to move in quiet spaces, to open ourselves up to the Voice of God that is within and all around us, and to hear the very real wisdom of our own bodies. And Isaiah 40:21-31 continues to expand our minds to what entering into this season of Epiphany means: to enter into the wisdom of a God that is both greater than our universe and yet utterly and completely a part of every living and inanimate morsel of it.

This understanding, of a God who is transcendent and immanent, who is beyond our knowing and yet in the tiniest kernel of sand, is the wisdom that will help illumine us as we near the transfiguration this week and will guide us through the season of Lent.

This poem from Isaiah helps to situate ourselves, wherever we might be, to the reality of the goodness, the loveliness and the wonder of a God who even accompanies us in our own time and place.

This scripture was written for the weary Israelites, the elders of the community who had endured the Babylonian exile, who were destitute and homeless with their temples and homes in ruin. They were living within uncertain times with the world they once knew completely in tatters. And in many ways, we, too, are still living through uncertain times, feeling the jolt and whiplash of going back and forth from lockdown to lockdown. There is very little that is certain about our future.

And yet.

Have we not known? Have we not heard? Has it not been told to us from the very beginning? It is God who lives with us on earth and who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings rulers to nothing and makes the powerful of the earth as nothing. The holy one is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth and does not faint or grow weary.

A wisdom that grounds us, that places our lives and this pandemic in the whole context of creation, across time and space.

We are living in but a moment.

And for many of us, we have lived through some of the most turbulent and changing moments in our human history. From world wars to the rise of technology, from a patriarchal world to one where women and the LGBTIQ+ community are gaining more rights and freedom, at least in the western world. We have lived through all the turbulence of the 20th and 21st century and we have also weathered the turbulence of our own lives. We have known what it is to wait for God and feel the strength of the creator course through our veins. An energy or life force that has brought us here, no matter how much we have fumbled, fallen and fought our way to wherever here may be.

And as we get older, as we become accustomed to the constant changes of our world and the constant uncertainty of the future, we know more now than when we were young, when we grew faint and weary and when we fell exhausted. We have learned how to let go and mount up like eagles wings. We have gained the inward strength that helped us weather the storms. We have learned patience. We have known what it is to wait, how to find the courage that the creator has endowed in each of us.

So may we continue to lift up our eyes, continue to wait for the holy one to renew our strength to face whatever unknown future lies in front of us. An unknown future that always involves a God who has created the very foundations of our world.