#10 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections
I Am With You: Courage Rooted in God’s Nearness – Isaiah 46:4
Carried All the Way Home
He had stopped driving at night.
Not because he wanted to, but because the road signs had begun to blur in a way that no amount of squinting could fix. His hands, once steady on the wheel of farm trucks and family station wagons, now trembled slightly when he lifted a coffee cup.
The house felt bigger than it used to. Quieter.
On the dresser sat an old photograph — black and white, edges curling. A young man stood there with squared shoulders and sharp jawline, holding a baby wrapped too tightly in a blanket. He used to be that man. Or at least, he remembered being him.
Now his granddaughter visited and gently took his arm when they walked from the porch to the mailbox.
“I’ve got you, Grandpa,” she would say.
He would smile, a little embarrassed, a little grateful.
One afternoon, after she left, he sat in his chair and read Isaiah 46. His eyes moved slowly, but they moved.
“Even to your old age, I am He,
And even to gray hairs I will carry you!”
He paused there.
Carried.
He had spent most of his life carrying things. Feed sacks. Lumber. Children. Worries. The family name. He had carried the sense that he was the strong one, the dependable one, the one who didn’t lean.
Now he was the one being leaned over to be helped.
And there in the quiet of that room, something shifted. The shame he hadn’t named softened into something else.
“I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry and will deliver you.”
He wasn’t falling out of usefulness. He wasn’t drifting into divine forgetfulness. He was not being phased out of God’s concern like an old model no longer supported.
He was being carried.
Not by his granddaughter.
By the same God who had carried him when he did not know he was being carried at twenty-five.
Isaiah 46 is not written to flatter aging saints. It is written to expose false gods. Babylon’s idols have to be strapped onto animals because they cannot move themselves. They burden their worshipers.
But the Lord says, in effect: I am not like that.
I have carried you from the womb.
I will carry you to gray hair.
I will carry you to deliverance.
The entire span of life — from origin to final rescue — rests on His shoulders.
That is the courage of this promise.
We tend to believe that God is most near when we are most useful. When we are building, leading, producing, striving. But Isaiah 46:4 declares something far steadier: God’s nearness is not measured by our output but by His covenant.
“I am He.”
He does not age. He does not tire of us. He does not quietly withdraw when we slow down. The same God who formed us sustains us. The same God who sustained us will deliver us.
And this is not only a promise for the elderly.
It is a rebuke to the self-sufficient young.
If God must carry us into old age, then He has been carrying us all along.
We do not grow independent of Him; we simply grow more aware of how dependent we have always been.
The courage rooted in God’s nearness is not loud. It does not shout. It rests.
You are not holding yourself together.
You are not holding onto God by your own grip.
You are being borne.
From birth.
Through strength.
Through decline.
Into glory.
And the One who carries does not stumble.
Even to gray hairs, He is still He.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #IAmWithYou #Isaiah464
I Am With You: Courage Rooted in God’s Nearness – Isaiah 46:4
Carried All the Way Home
He had stopped driving at night.
Not because he wanted to, but because the road signs had begun to blur in a way that no amount of squinting could fix. His hands, once steady on the wheel of farm trucks and family station wagons, now trembled slightly when he lifted a coffee cup.
The house felt bigger than it used to. Quieter.
On the dresser sat an old photograph — black and white, edges curling. A young man stood there with squared shoulders and sharp jawline, holding a baby wrapped too tightly in a blanket. He used to be that man. Or at least, he remembered being him.
Now his granddaughter visited and gently took his arm when they walked from the porch to the mailbox.
“I’ve got you, Grandpa,” she would say.
He would smile, a little embarrassed, a little grateful.
One afternoon, after she left, he sat in his chair and read Isaiah 46. His eyes moved slowly, but they moved.
“Even to your old age, I am He,
And even to gray hairs I will carry you!”
He paused there.
Carried.
He had spent most of his life carrying things. Feed sacks. Lumber. Children. Worries. The family name. He had carried the sense that he was the strong one, the dependable one, the one who didn’t lean.
Now he was the one being leaned over to be helped.
And there in the quiet of that room, something shifted. The shame he hadn’t named softened into something else.
“I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry and will deliver you.”
He wasn’t falling out of usefulness. He wasn’t drifting into divine forgetfulness. He was not being phased out of God’s concern like an old model no longer supported.
He was being carried.
Not by his granddaughter.
By the same God who had carried him when he did not know he was being carried at twenty-five.
Isaiah 46 is not written to flatter aging saints. It is written to expose false gods. Babylon’s idols have to be strapped onto animals because they cannot move themselves. They burden their worshipers.
But the Lord says, in effect: I am not like that.
I have carried you from the womb.
I will carry you to gray hair.
I will carry you to deliverance.
The entire span of life — from origin to final rescue — rests on His shoulders.
That is the courage of this promise.
We tend to believe that God is most near when we are most useful. When we are building, leading, producing, striving. But Isaiah 46:4 declares something far steadier: God’s nearness is not measured by our output but by His covenant.
“I am He.”
He does not age. He does not tire of us. He does not quietly withdraw when we slow down. The same God who formed us sustains us. The same God who sustained us will deliver us.
And this is not only a promise for the elderly.
It is a rebuke to the self-sufficient young.
If God must carry us into old age, then He has been carrying us all along.
We do not grow independent of Him; we simply grow more aware of how dependent we have always been.
The courage rooted in God’s nearness is not loud. It does not shout. It rests.
You are not holding yourself together.
You are not holding onto God by your own grip.
You are being borne.
From birth.
Through strength.
Through decline.
Into glory.
And the One who carries does not stumble.
Even to gray hairs, He is still He.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #IAmWithYou #Isaiah464
#10 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections
I Am With You: Courage Rooted in God’s Nearness – Isaiah 46:4
Carried All the Way Home
He had stopped driving at night.
Not because he wanted to, but because the road signs had begun to blur in a way that no amount of squinting could fix. His hands, once steady on the wheel of farm trucks and family station wagons, now trembled slightly when he lifted a coffee cup.
The house felt bigger than it used to. Quieter.
On the dresser sat an old photograph — black and white, edges curling. A young man stood there with squared shoulders and sharp jawline, holding a baby wrapped too tightly in a blanket. He used to be that man. Or at least, he remembered being him.
Now his granddaughter visited and gently took his arm when they walked from the porch to the mailbox.
“I’ve got you, Grandpa,” she would say.
He would smile, a little embarrassed, a little grateful.
One afternoon, after she left, he sat in his chair and read Isaiah 46. His eyes moved slowly, but they moved.
“Even to your old age, I am He,
And even to gray hairs I will carry you!”
He paused there.
Carried.
He had spent most of his life carrying things. Feed sacks. Lumber. Children. Worries. The family name. He had carried the sense that he was the strong one, the dependable one, the one who didn’t lean.
Now he was the one being leaned over to be helped.
And there in the quiet of that room, something shifted. The shame he hadn’t named softened into something else.
“I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry and will deliver you.”
He wasn’t falling out of usefulness. He wasn’t drifting into divine forgetfulness. He was not being phased out of God’s concern like an old model no longer supported.
He was being carried.
Not by his granddaughter.
By the same God who had carried him when he did not know he was being carried at twenty-five.
Isaiah 46 is not written to flatter aging saints. It is written to expose false gods. Babylon’s idols have to be strapped onto animals because they cannot move themselves. They burden their worshipers.
But the Lord says, in effect: I am not like that.
I have carried you from the womb.
I will carry you to gray hair.
I will carry you to deliverance.
The entire span of life — from origin to final rescue — rests on His shoulders.
That is the courage of this promise.
We tend to believe that God is most near when we are most useful. When we are building, leading, producing, striving. But Isaiah 46:4 declares something far steadier: God’s nearness is not measured by our output but by His covenant.
“I am He.”
He does not age. He does not tire of us. He does not quietly withdraw when we slow down. The same God who formed us sustains us. The same God who sustained us will deliver us.
And this is not only a promise for the elderly.
It is a rebuke to the self-sufficient young.
If God must carry us into old age, then He has been carrying us all along.
We do not grow independent of Him; we simply grow more aware of how dependent we have always been.
The courage rooted in God’s nearness is not loud. It does not shout. It rests.
You are not holding yourself together.
You are not holding onto God by your own grip.
You are being borne.
From birth.
Through strength.
Through decline.
Into glory.
And the One who carries does not stumble.
Even to gray hairs, He is still He.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #IAmWithYou #Isaiah464
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