Isaiah 40 is no stranger to the Advent season.  It’s also part of the culture of the school where I teach.  But I recently had a “fresh eyes” experience of one particular part of the chapter when I saw it in the context of Paul David Tripp’s Lost in the Middle.

The chapter begins with some Advent resonance:

¹Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her . . .

And then goes full John-the-Baptist:

3 A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Then it goes big again, broad with a call to proclamation:

9 Go on up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”

The end, of course, is about the call to wait and what God does as we wait.  But what I had not realized/remembered lately is that the immediate context is a sense of complaint, a sense of having not been heard by God.

²⁷ 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”?
²⁸ 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.
²⁹ He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
³⁰ Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
³¹ but they 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.

That last verse, verse 31, is the basis of our school’s alma mater.  I say “basis” because we add a tag at the end that turns the verse into a prayer.  As the song ends we sing “teach us, Lord/teach us Lord, to wait.”  Because waiting is something you have to learn to do well.  And that’s one gift that the season of Advent can give us.

(Scripture from the English Standard Version)