“God  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 40:29-31

“To one that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that one has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what one has seen in the light.”  (Adapted from quote by  Coventry Patmore)

To say that I have been disheartened in recent  weeks, would be an understatement.  The last month  has been filled  with some very dark days.  These words from Howard Thurman spoke to me, as I reflected on the daily news . . .  a reminder there is light, and a giver of light.

“Waiting is a window opening on many landscapes… It is the experience of recovering balance when catapulted from one’s place. It is the quiet forming of a pattern of recollection in which there is called into focus the fragmentary values from myriad encounters of many kinds in a lifetime of living. It is to watch a gathering darkness until all light is swallowed up completely without the power to interfere or bring a halt. Then to continue one’s journey in the darkness with one’s footsteps guided by the illumination of remembered radiance is to know courage of a peculiar kind—the courage to demand that light continue to be light even in the surrounding darkness. To walk in the light while darkness invades, envelops, and surrounds is to wait on the Lord. This is to know the renewal of strength. This is to walk and faint not.”

–Howard Thurman, The Inward Journey, pg. 81-82

For God does give “Power to the  faint and strengthens the powerless.”