Snow Day Service: A Liturgy for the Weakened Soul
(There is an audio file for you to listen to at the end of this devotional. Please scroll to the bottom to see it!)
Some worship for you to listen:
Contemplative: I Will Exalt - Brooke Ligertwood, Surrendered - Sanctified Vessels
Corporate: My Life is In Your Hands - Kirk Franklin and Maverick City
Verses: Isaiah 26:3-8, 12-13
3 You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
4 Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
5 He humbles those who dwell on high,
he lays the lofty city low;
he levels it to the ground
and casts it down to the dust.
6 Feet trample it down—
the feet of the oppressed,
the footsteps of the poor.7 The path of the righteous is level;
you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.12 Lord, you establish peace for us;
all that we have accomplished you have done for us.
13 Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us,
but your name alone do we honor.
I have a really hard time writing about this.
For me, waiting is hard, and trusting can be even harder.
My family has always called me impatient. From waiting in line for food, to being stuck in traffic, I have a tendency to want to speed things up, get things moving. I’ve learned over the year that this is because waiting often feels like a waste of time, like I’m not progressing or doing what I should be doing.
Sometimes, I even feel guilt for waiting, like my waiting is wrong. I should be moving forward, but why am I waiting? Sometimes, waiting feels like a setback— especially in between plans for my life. I didn’t want to wait, so I jumped into work after four years of too much serving at church and three majors. I didn’t want to wait, so I jumped into ministry at the earliest opportunity.
It was my inability to be still and wait that almost burned me out six years ago, when the Lord led me to plant our English Congregation. I was struggling for months and edging on defeat when my mother dropped a big piece of wisdom on me in the middle of a late-night phone call:
“Jane, why are you running ahead of the Lord?”
Until that point, I had a vague idea that I may be running too much. (Read last week’s liturgy here) But this—the concept of waiting on the Lord— was entirely new. This introduced a new paradigm that threatened to shift everything I knew about waiting— where waiting is not wasted time, waiting is not falling behind, but waiting is right where the Lord has you.
Isaiah 26 talks about waiting and trusting in the Lord here in a way that is counter cultural. The actual grammar of verse 3 is clunky in Hebrew, and so it’s worthwhile looking at other translations as we make meaning of the text.
The ESV translates this as:
“You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.”
And the RSV translates this as:
“Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace—
in peace because they trust in you.”
In the book of Isaiah, this passage is a thanksgiving hymn of Judah, thanking the God of Israel for what will be done and who God is, in a context where Israel did not know how to follow or trust in the Lord. (I encourage you to read more about the context of Isaiah!) It starts with “Those whose minds are steadfast you keep in peace…”
It’s important to pay attention to the words here. While the word “steadfast” in English may connote to be strong and steady or constant, in the Hebrew, the word actually means “to be supported, helped, and sustained.” So this word is better translated as “steadied.” And then, the verb “keep” means “to protect, preserve, keep watch over.”
But what are these minds steadied to be? What place are they steadied in?
Peace.
The word shal’om, repeated twice here (in the RSV, it repeats it, but in the NIV and ESV they are compounded as “perfect peace”), means more than the word peace may mean to us in English. In the Hebrew, shal’om means “well-being, completeness.” Shalom refers to a harmony and peace where every element of life is well and whole. It goes way beyond the word “peace” to refer a pervasive and complete wellness, where every aspect of life is intact and secure.
But why are we kept in perfect peace? Better yet, how do we get to a place where we experience shalom? What does that look like?
The passage lays it out for us: “Because they trust in You.”
To trust here means to continue to rely with dogged determination, without respect to circumstance. This passage talks about a powerful trust that is not passive or reactive, but intentional and continuous. This is a process of putting down our hammer and plow to pick up His hand. This takes time and is something we say yes to every day.
The passage then goes on to talk about why God is worthy of our determined reliance on him: because He is our everlasting rock. He brings the lofty low, He makes the path of the righteous level. He establishes peace for us, and all that we have accomplished is what he has done for us.
Isn’t that funny? Often, when we try to trust God more, we may find ourselves looking inward at ourselves. We may lift up our hands and try to give Him what we hold to. We may open our Bibles more to find more faith within ourselves to be stayed.
It’s easy to focus on our own hearts.
But the answer to trusting Him with our lives is not to hyper-fixate on our heart posture, but on His person. The way of fixing our resolve to rely on Him rather than ourselves and receive His shalom is to focus on Him and what He’s done. God is worthy of not only our worship, but also our intentional, determined reliance on Him. He is worthy of our trust.
And this truth has the power to change our hearts from overworking to waiting.
Living as though this God truly is our God has the transformative power to break our strongholds and introduce us to a paradigm where God is the one to open and close every door. Even in our waiting, all we have to do is allow ourselves to be steadied by Him. To give Him our hurry and receive His waiting. To allow our hearts to be rewired from performance to purpose.
This is what it means to be stayed. All my life, I thought I had to be strong and trust— but it’s the opposite. We are steadied by God.
Even though we are steadied, to trust in the Lord is still not easy. In fact, it’s really hard. We crave control— and so did Israel. At the time that Israel sang this hymn of thanksgiving, they did not end up trusting in the Lord. And yet God continues to invite Israel—and us—to himself. And centuries later, He goes the distance. When our hearts were not able to bridge the gap, He comes down to dwell among us and bridge the gap Himself.
Even today, our God is active, intentional, and present with Us.
As our lives are interrupted with weather to season, episode after episode, let’s wrestle before God before we run to other things and be steadied by Him. Let’s rely on him with determination, without regard to what’s before us— because we trust Him truly and our lives depend on Him.
In lieu of small group or response, take a minute to listen to Pastors Jane and Amy talk about the complexity of trusting in the Lord (or maybe coping with relinquishing everything and trusting/waiting on the Lord lol) as a companion to your meditation:
(for those that connect access Spotify podcast)
Here’s a breath prayer as you go into your week:
Inhale: Trust in the Lord
Exhale: He is an Everlasting Rock
Inhale: I trust You
Exhale: You are my Peace
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Please feel free to end this time with the Lord with the Lord’s Prayer. Try to inhale and exhale every other line, and do not recite it fast; mull over the lines as you pray to him this week. Take your time with it before you say Amen.
Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed by Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power,
and the Glory forever and ever,
Amen.
