Tired to the Bone

The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail (Isaiah 58:11).

"Strengthen your bones".....I paused there when reading. Why bones?....I pondered.We hear it to describe the ultimate in fatigue: bone tired. Dry as a bone. Wasted. Used up. We get the picture.

This passage is not about osteoporosis, though, if you Google it, bone-strengthening treatments and medications pop up. Perhaps we rush too hastily to the quick-fix when it's too late. Rather than eating a calcium-rich diet and committing to weight-bearing exercise for life, millions of women wait until there are signs of deterioration before addressing what we already know to be true: we need strong and healthy bones or we risk life-threatening consequences. But as teenage girls, that fact is a lifetime away and has no bearing on our choices, for most.

My mother says, "We get too soon old and too late smart." She has a point. (She always does. That is another lesson I've learned.)

The NIV reads, "strengthen your frame." Our frame is that which supports us, hold us up. What if strengthening our frame means making small changes daily--both physically and spiritually? What if we have in our midst a source for continual guidance....for daily strength and refreshment....whose waters do not fail? Would we not be wise to make our way to that fountain, even if we come tentatively or without expectation of what we might find, and ask for it?

Make Your Presence known to us, I pray, in ways big and small.

Nothing refreshes like water. Gardens depend on it, and we do too.

But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).

Photos: Longwood Gardens, Cathedral courtyard in Dubrovnik, Croatia.