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They That Wait Upon the Lord Shall Renew Their Strength, Isaiah 40:31

Wings spread from edge to edge over a range of sunlit peaks: the eagle of Isaiah 40:31, painted as the bird Americans know best, for anyone who is tired and waiting.

An eagle in full flight

The eagle takes up the whole upper half of the painting. Its wings are open wide, every long brown flight feather drawn separately, its white head turned to the right and its yellow beak and talons catching the light. The fan of its white tail spreads beneath it. It is a bald eagle, painted close enough that you can almost hear the air in the feathers.

Below, the landscape is small by comparison: rose-tinted mountains with a sun just rising between them, a river running out of the valley, dark pines and a few rounded boulders in the foreground. The verse is lettered in four lines at the top: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.” and Isaiah 40:31 under the last line.

What does it mean to wait upon the Lord?

Isaiah 40 opens with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people”, and the whole chapter answers a weary nation that feels overlooked by God. Just before our verse the prophet admits the obvious: “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.” Human energy runs out, even at its peak. But “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”

The Hebrew verb for “wait”, qavah, is not passive. It carries the idea of hope and expectation, and is related to a word for a cord that is stretched tight. To wait on God is to hold on to him in trust, and the promise is an exchange: our spent strength for his renewed one. The verse then comes down to earth step by step, ending: “they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Sometimes the greatest grace is simply to keep walking.

The bird in the Hebrew text, nesher, may refer to the great vultures and eagles of the region rather than the North American species. The painter has chosen the bald eagle, whose broad glide on rising air illustrates the verse perfectly: it does not flap harder, it lets something else carry it.

For fathers, runners and those in mourning

Isaiah 40:31 is a favorite of runners, veterans and men who like a strong, clear image, and it suits a study, a garage workshop or an office. It is also a gentle sympathy gift, often read at funerals for someone who has finally stopped being weary.

Read Isaiah 40 and what it means