Lift Up Your Eyes
Isaiah 40:26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
A funny thing happens when you lift up your eyes from the day to day. I have a beautiful park near my place, where I often go walking. I realised one day, that I constantly had my eyes looking down at the path ahead. Day after day.
So I decided instead, that I would look around. And you know, it opened up a whole new world of beauty and joy.
We tend to walk through life like that, looking down at our circumstances. Looking down and seeing the problems. Focussing on the here and now, don’t we.
At a time when Israel had spent seventy years as slaves, in captivity in Babylon, at a time when all God’s people could see was a lifetime of toil, God said this to them:
Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. (Isaiah 40:26)
God wanted them to lift there eyes up out of their misery, out of their sense of lostness and of slavery, to focus on Him, on His power, on what He can do for them. He goes on …
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:27-13)
I wonder if perhaps today, you feel faint and weary and powerless. I wonder if perhaps today you feel exhausted. If you do, then lift up your eyes and see this God who put all the stars, the trillions upon trillions of stars in their place. The God who created the whole universe. The God who wants to renew your strength so that you too will mount up with wings like eagles, so that you can run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.
Lift up your eyes today and wait expectantly on God – that’s what the original Hebrew word there means – to wait expectantly, hoping in Him, trusting in Him … then you will be laying hold of the might and the power, the love and the compassion of God for you, in your circumstances. In your life.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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