Learning To Lean

“Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.” (Isa 50:10 AV)

 

This verse may seem a bit odd.  What is the prophet speaking of?  How can a servant of God who fears God and feareth Him always walk in darkness and have no light?  How can someone who knows God walk in darkness?  Doesn’t John deal with that in his epistles?  The answer, and application, are in the context of this verse.  This verse is written to those who will be born while the nation is in captivity.  They will hear of the failures of their forefathers and turn to the LORD because of it.  Some of these children will be seventy years old when they return to Palestine.  For almost their entire life, they will be in the land of the heathen serving a pagan king or two.  The darkness they will experience is the darkness of oppression.  The lack of light will be the lack of hope in their present set of circumstances.  The answer is to trust and stay. 

Note in particular there is trusting and staying.  They are not necessarily the same although trusting should result in staying.  Think of a set of crutches.  I can trust they will keep me up.  I can adjust the height for maximum comfort.  I can watch others navigate the use of crutches successfully.  I can watch YouTube videos on how they are manufactured and their proper use.  But that does not mean I am staying on them.  To stay on something, biblically speaking, is to lean on them.  One of the first things one does with crutches is to learn to lean on them.  Before we learn to navigate with them, we learn to lean on them.  First, with both crutches firmly held in the hands.  Once we get that down, we learn to swing back and forth with them.  Then we learn to lean on them without hanging on to them with the hand.  The next big step is to work those crutches as the injured learns to navigate on level ground.  The last and hardest skill to learn is steps.  Going up steps is more difficult than descending them.  Unless the patient is confident with leaning on those crutches, a fall is almost assured.  One must trust and lean.  Trusting is not enough.  Leaning is the maturation of that trust.

Every one of us has those times when light is limited.  In the example above, it was no fault of their own.  The condition of their captivity was a result of the poor choices of their forefathers.  Yet, there they were.  In the darkness of life because someone else made decisions that affected them.  No doubt the children of Israel dealt with many emotions.  The fairness of God is perhaps the greatest.  Anger that their forefathers created a life they didn’t ask for is a thought I am sure passed their minds.  Knowing the prophecy of Jeremiah, they may have become impatient.  There would be those born in captivity or who were very young when arriving, who would never see freedom.  They would die in their darkness and without light.  The only way to navigate through those times is trust and leaning.  Learning to lean takes adverse conditions.  It is not something learned when leaning is not necessary.  They learned to lean because it was their only hope amid circumstances not of their own making.  They learned to lean because there was no light.  Learning to lean made for strength and stability in their time.  Learning to lean is what the child of God in any dispensation must do.  Otherwise, those times of darkness and no light will trip us up and cause a great deal of harm.