Caring for the Sick: a free devotion

Isaiah 40:29–31

He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 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.

Go deeper

he increases strength

Koach · koach · H3581 · HEBREW
strength, power, might — the capacity to act when one is spent

The word koach appears 125 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, and it almost always refers to a force that can be depleted. Caregivers know this depletion. You give and give — lifting, watching, praying, staying — and there comes a moment when your own koach is gone. Isaiah 40:29 describes the God who gives koach to the faint: not a God who tells you to find more strength inside yourself, but one who transfers his own endless supply to the one who has run out.

1 Kings 19 · The Angel and the Sleeping Prophet

After the great victory on Mount Carmel, Elijah ran — and then collapsed. He sat under a broom tree, told God he was done, and fell asleep. He didn't ask for a vision. He didn't pray for revival. He just stopped. What happened next is quietly extraordinary: an angel touched him and said, "Arise and eat." Not a sermon. Not a rebuke for his fear. Food. Water. Touch. Then the angel let him sleep again, and came back a second time: "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you." God saw the distance ahead — forty days to Horeb — and he met the prophet's body before he touched his soul.

they who wait for the LORD

Qavah · qavah · H6960 · HEBREW
to wait, to hope, to bind together — like cords being twisted into rope

The root of qavah carries the image of cords being wound and twisted together to form rope. Waiting on God, in the Hebrew imagination, is not passive — it is the act of binding your life to his, of weaving your strength into his, until you cannot tell where you end and he begins. Caregivers are often told to "take care of themselves," and that counsel is not wrong. But Isaiah 40:31 goes deeper: the source of renewed strength is not self-care but God-binding. Those who wait for the LORD — who stay attached to him in the long middle — find their strength renewed.

Acts 1–2 · Ten Days in the Upper Room

Jesus told them plainly: do not go. Wait. He had just spent forty days appearing to them after the resurrection. Now he was ascending. And the instruction, before he left, was to go to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father. They didn't know what the promise would look like. They didn't know it would be ten days. They returned to the upper room — 120 of them — and they devoted themselves to prayer. They weren't idle; they were attending. They were bound to something they could not yet see. And on the tenth day, at Pentecost, the room shook.

wings like eagles

Nešer · nešer · H5404 · HEBREW
eagle — the bird that soars on updrafts without beating its wings

The nešer — eagle — does not power its way through the sky. It finds thermal updrafts, spreads its massive wings, and rises on the wind that someone else provides. Isaiah 40:31 promises not the strength to flap harder, but the ability to soar differently. Caregivers often try to manage their exhaustion through willpower, better schedules, and forcing themselves to keep going. The nešer image suggests something else: what if the answer is not more effort but a different kind of lift?

Exodus 19 · What God Said He Did

When God invited Moses up the mountain at Sinai, he began not with the law but with a memory. "You yourselves have seen," he said, "what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself." The Exodus — the plagues, the parting of the sea, the column of cloud by day and fire by night — all of it was gathered into a single image: eagles' wings. He had not told them where they were going step by step. He had simply lifted them out of what they could not escape and carried them to where he was.

Declarations

✦ God gives power to the faint and increases the strength of those who have no might. (Isaiah 40:29)
✦ I wait on the LORD, and he renews my strength so I can rise above what would otherwise ground me. (Isaiah 40:31)
✦ God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in this trouble — he is already in the room. (Psalm 46:1)
✦ My outer self may be weary, but my inner self is being renewed by God, day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)

Prayer

Father, I come to you as the one beside the bed — the one who has been giving and watching and praying and staying. I don't always know what to ask for. I know I am tired. I know the journey is too great for me alone. But that is exactly where you meet people, and I am choosing to believe you meet me here too. Give me koach — strength that is not my own, poured into the places where mine has run out. Teach me qavah — how to bind myself to you in the long middle, when nothing has resolved and I am still here. Lift me on the nešer wings — not out of this, but through it, and into a deeper knowing of who you are. Where I feel guilty for not being enough, remind me that I am not supposed to be enough. Where I feel invisible, remind me that you see every quiet act of love. Where I feel forgotten, remind me that you bore your own people on eagles' wings when they could not escape on their own. Renew me — outer and inner. Fill me before you send me back. And let the one I am caring for see something of you in the way I show up. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Think about it

Where in your caregiving have you been trying to generate strength you don't have? What would it look like to wait on God — to bind yourself to him — in that specific place? Write about what you most need him to carry you through right now.

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