We were quite busy last month getting ready my sister’s graduation party. Gardening, mowing, pulling weeds around buildings, cleaning the house, shopping, as well as lots of Bible reading pretty much filled up whole days. My family reads through the Bible once a year and when we complete our trip through the Bible, we begin our summer vacation and commence reading again with Psalms. Most years, we finish school on June 1^st, but since my sister was graduating, we wanted to be done with school on May 18^th, the date of the celebration. Quite a while before, we calculated how many chapters a day we would have to read, and it came up to about 12 a day! So began an exciting journey through Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, most of the latter prophets, John, and Revelations.

The book of Isaiah stood out to me the most. Isaiah 26:11 says, “Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works.” Remember in the New Testament how Paul says, “It is not I that live but Christ that lives within in me”? Another verse I like is Isaiah 30:15, “For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.”

The people wanted to prepare and worry instead of rest and trust because they thought it made more sense. And with carnal understanding, it did. But if only they could have seen the spiritual side of things. They would have seen that “In the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength” (Isaiah 26:4).

You shouldn’t worry at all! Isaiah 51:13 says that they “feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor as if he were ready to destroy,” and they forgot the Lord. They worried so much about a problem that they lost sight of the solution.

Remember Isaiah 40:28-31, “ Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”