Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. – Isaiah 40:28
“Do you think God ever gets tired?” I asked my husband. Feeling like a school girl dangling my legs from a cedar wood stool, in holy wonderment I almost raised my hand. In the lecture hall of life, better known as the corner of 44th Street in New York City, I watched the communion of saints and sinners on a pilgrimage up and down the festival on 9th avenue. Crunching on perfectly salted tortilla chips and super fresh guacamole in my favorite fast food Mexican haunt, I watched humans of ever shape and color. I marveled at skin tone and eyes, limbs and hair. I saw emotion – laughter and frustration. Seeming peace and a robotic like gait and gaze on many. Are they all – alright?
He knows the number on each head. Every heart. Every story. Doesn’t He ever get tired?
His endless creativity and expression in and through humanity is sometimes, for me , exhausting. I can’t help seeing a step beyond the miracle of creation. I see and feel the great need. It’s how I’m wired. So why? Why the perpetual cycle of birth and death of every created thing when kingdom could come in a flash to heal or end all the things that hurt.
**********
Later that day I took a walk. I was feeling tired but needed the head space a good walk provides. Making my way down a city block brings me face to face with the breadth of success and suffering and everything in between. Everyday. It’s a question I can’t avoid.
On the street dividing Hells Kitchen from Theater row I saw an elderly paraplegic man struggling for breath while his family held their own. I saw a “fresh young thing” of a girl with race horse legs and a portfolio. She was gorgeous in that other worldly way that makes her a model. I saw a working woman in classic black pumps and a perfect suit. Her hair gave away the fatigue of the day but she looked the part of the corporate executive … And there was me, a middle-aged woman in yoga pants and a tunic for modesty – taking pictures with a smart phone. I can’t know the line of demarcation that exists between our collective joy or silent suffering. We all, for one reason or another seemed tired. And maybe a little sad.
I walked and wondered as I rushed through Times Square.
I prayed.
*********
I’d left my students that day feeling heavy. Teaching is challenging work when you acknowledge another world. One where spirit is working and a battle is being fought every day for the lives of the children you serve. I’d just had a talk with a co-worker. It was a hard talk about hard things. I didn’t have words but left the building with the weight of everything I wanted to say – but didn’t. It was time for a self-imposed sabbath…a little shabbat for my world-weary soul. I asked again, God, are you tired?….because I am. Sometimes, all the stories, make me sad.
**********
On the corner of Madison Avenue and 46th street I stop long enough to take in my surroundings. To my right and in the middle of the street, construction. Sectioned off to let the holy work of repair – happen. This world is in a perpetual state of renewal. I can thank God for that. A few blocks up I spot a statue of a priest on the roof of the rectory behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I’d not noticed it before. He was turned in and away from the street but he was there. A monk in the world when I needed to see one.
A welcomed cool breeze blew in from the west, playing with the fringes of my well-loved sweater. It lifted the asymmetrical edges hanging well past my knees to float around me like angels … dancing.
And just like that I felt myself caught in the grace of an answer. My eyes trailed the line of blessings I’d stumbled upon to catch the beauty of wedding dresses in the window of Ethiopian designer Amsale, the new mommy glow on a woman as she nestled her days old baby in a sling – and the mystery of sunset.
God doesn’t get tired.
I continued walking west following patches of sunlight as they moved across town. It shimmered and lingered in the trees, a last long goodbye to Central Park before heading over to the Hudson River. Until tomorrow.
Fully awakened, fully aware…refreshed I noticed. Everything. The word on the wall on the corner of 5th avenue and the unicorn winking at me from the synagogue door.
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,[a]
and to walk humbly with your God? – Micah 6:8
God doesn’t get tired. If He does, he doesn’t give up. He continually explores new ways to inspire us to keep going. He offers glimpses, hints at his activity in the world, to convince us of his presence, over and over again.
