The Tuesday before Epiphany: in a heap?

I went into church this evening and was amused to find all the characters of Christmas in a heap! 

Perhaps we feel like them on this first proper working day of 2022. Do we contemplate the reality of January and want to collapse in a heap just thinking about it? Ice on the inside of the windscreen going out just now; a disappointment with something not turning out how I had hoped that I’ve had to accept today; trying to plan a sabbatical with so many uncertainties: 217,000 Covid cases and hospitals, schools and other things we rely on nearly at breaking point, but an insistence tonight we stick with the government plan b and too many zoom meetings today! A minister colleague reflected with me earlier with nearly two years of Covid now, we are professionally knackered! 

I’m not sure being knackered is in the Bible but weariness certainly is. How do we find the strength to face what we need to face ahead? We cannot lose what we’ve just declared four days into a New Year! Well, some verses for us from Isaiah chapter 40 if we feel like those characters in church who did Christmas but are now just in a heap with stuff. 

28 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.
29 He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

Isn’t that great? I think perhaps that’s the greatest promise in the Bible. Life can be really tough and January isn’t easy for many people. We need to hold on when we think we are too exhausted to do anything very much. And let God into those moments. And also to admit we are in a heap!

(Author’s note: I am fine! I’ve just had a lot of people tell me they are exhausted and it’s only January 4th :))