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Isaiah 40 — Comfort, scale, and the God who never gets tired
8 min read
For thirty-nine chapters, has been delivering some of the heaviest words in the Old Testament. Warning after warning. on , judgment on the nations, judgment on anyone who thought they could ignore God and get away with it. The weight has been relentless.
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And then — right here — the tone completely shifts. Like a song that drops into a new key. After all that darkness, God opens his mouth and the first word out is comfort. What comes next is a portrait of who God actually is — drawn in strokes wide enough to hold the oceans and personal enough to name every star in . If you've never read this chapter slowly, now's the time.
After everything had been through — years of rebellion, the weight of coming , the slow unraveling of everything that once felt secure — God spoke. And what he said was stunning:
"Comfort, comfort my people," says your God. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her season of struggle is over. Her wrongdoing has been pardoned. She has received from the Lord's hand more than enough consequence for what she's done."
That repetition — "comfort, comfort" — isn't accidental. In , repeating a word is how you make it emphatic. This isn't a suggestion. It's urgent. God isn't whispering from a distance. He's leaning in, and the first thing he wants his people to hear after all the hard chapters is: it's going to be okay. Not because they earned it. Not because they fixed themselves. Because he decided it was time for .
Then a voice rang out — an announcement that something massive was coming:
"In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a straight highway through the desert for our God. Every valley will be raised up. Every mountain and hill will be brought low. The rough, uneven ground will become smooth and level.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed — and every living person will see it together. The mouth of the Lord has spoken it."
Centuries later, would step into the wilderness and start shouting these exact words. He was the voice. was the road being prepared for. But even in time, the image is extraordinary: God is coming, and when he does, nothing will stand in the way. Not geography. Not obstacles. Not the mess you've made. He will level the road himself.
Think about that for a moment. The preparation isn't ultimately your job. He's the one doing the landscaping.
Then came another voice — this time with a command that confused even the :
A voice said, "Cry out!"
And I said, "What should I cry?"
"All people are like grass. All their beauty is like a wildflower in a field. The grass dries up. The flower wilts when the breath of the Lord blows across it. People are no different — they're grass.
The grass dries up. The flower wilts. But the word of our God stands forever."
This one sits with you. Everything you're building — your reputation, your plans, your appearance, your influence — has the lifespan of a wildflower. That's not cynicism. It's honesty. Scroll through photos from five years ago and you'll feel it. The things that consumed you then barely register now. But God's word? Still standing. Still relevant. Still doing exactly what it said it would do. In a world where everything has an expiration date, that's the one thing that doesn't.
Now the tone builds. This isn't quiet comfort anymore — this is an announcement that demands volume:
"Get up on a high mountain, Zion — you who carry Good News! Raise your voice with everything you've got, Jerusalem. Raise it and don't be afraid. Tell every city in Judah: Look — here is your God!
The Lord God is coming with power. His arm rules for him. His reward is with him, and what he's earned comes before him.
He will care for his flock like a Shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them close to his chest. He will gently lead the ones who are nursing their young."
Read those last three lines again. This God who's arriving with power and authority — what does he do with it? He picks up lambs. He carries them against his chest. He slows his pace for the ones who are struggling to keep up. That's the God of the Bible. Not power OR tenderness — both. At the same time. The strongest being in the universe, moving gently because someone near him is fragile.
Now pulls the camera back — way back — and the scale becomes almost unbearable:
Who has held the oceans in the hollow of his hand? Who measured the sky with a handspan? Who scooped up the dust of the earth in a measuring cup, or weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills on a balance?
Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord? Who has been his advisor? Who did he consult to gain understanding? Who taught him the path of justice, or taught him knowledge, or showed him the way of wisdom?
Look — the nations are like a single drop falling from a bucket. Like a speck of dust on a scale. He picks up entire coastlines like fine powder. All the forests of Lebanon wouldn't be enough firewood for a proper offering to him. Every animal in those forests wouldn't be enough for a single sacrifice. All the nations combined? They register as nothing before him. Less than nothing. Empty.
Let that scale settle in your mind. The oceans — all of them — fit in the cup of his hand. The mountains sit on his kitchen scale. The nation you think is the most powerful thing on the planet? A water droplet. A speck of dust. Not because nations don't matter, but because God operates on a scale that makes our biggest categories look like rounding errors. Whatever you're intimidated by right now — a diagnosis, a deadline, a person with authority over you — it's a speck on God's scale.
So asks the obvious question — and then answers it with cutting clarity:
So who are you going to compare God to? What image could possibly capture him?
An Idol? A craftsman shapes it. A goldsmith coats it in gold and hangs silver chains on it. Someone too poor for that picks a piece of wood that won't rot, then hires a skilled worker to carve an idol that won't topple over.
Don't you know this? Haven't you heard? Hasn't this been obvious since the very beginning? Haven't you understood since the foundations of the earth were laid?
He sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants look like grasshoppers to him. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain — spreads them out like a tent to live in. He reduces rulers to nothing. He makes the powerful people of this world into emptiness.
They barely get planted, barely get established, barely put down roots — and he breathes on them and they wither. The storm carries them off like dry straw.
The contrast is devastating. Humans build a god out of metal and wood — and then have to make sure it doesn't fall over. Meanwhile, the real God unfurls galaxies like curtains and dismantles empires with a breath. Every generation has its version of this same mistake. We take something we can see, something we can control, something that makes us feel secure — and we give it the weight that only God can carry. A career. A relationship. A portfolio. A following. And it can't hold you. It wasn't built to.
God himself asks the question now — and the answer is written across the sky:
"So who will you compare me to? Who is my equal?" says the Holy One.
"Lift your eyes up. Look at the night sky. Who made all of this? He's the one who brings out every star by number — calling each of them by name. Because of his great power and overwhelming strength, not a single one is missing."
Astronomers estimate there are roughly 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. God knows each one by name. Not catalogued. Not numbered. Named. If he tracks stars like that — with that kind of intimate, detailed, personal attention — what makes you think he's lost track of you? The God who names stars is not the God who forgets people.
And now the chapter arrives where it's been heading all along — directly at the person who's exhausted, overlooked, and starting to wonder if God even notices:
Why do you say, O Jacob — why do you speak, Israel — "God can't see what I'm going through. He's overlooking my case"?
Don't you know? Haven't you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God — the Creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn't get tired. He doesn't burn out. His understanding is beyond anything you can search or measure.
He gives power to the exhausted. He increases strength in the person who has nothing left.
Even young people — the ones in their prime — get tired and collapse. The strongest among them stumble and fall.
But those who wait for the Lord will have their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.
This could well be the widely quoted passage in the Old Testament, and there's a reason. It doesn't promise that life gets easy. It doesn't say you'll never be tired. It says the people who wait — who hold on, who keep trusting even when every circumstance says "give up" — those people get something the young and strong can't manufacture on their own. Renewed strength. Not from . Not from a better routine. From God himself. And notice the order at the end: soar, run, walk. It's not building up to a climax. It's saying he'll be there for the dramatic mountaintop moments AND the ordinary Tuesday mornings when you just need enough to put one foot in front of the other. That's the . Not that you'll never be tired. That you'll never be alone in it.