Isaiah 40:31

“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.”

Waiting That Binds: Strength Formed in the Tension

The Word Beneath the Word

Isaiah 40:31 has always been a familiar and comforting verse but recently, I became curious about what lies beneath our English translations.

ESV / KJV use the word wait
NIV translates it as hope
NLT uses trust

All three point to the same Hebrew word: qāvâ (qavah).

Qavah does not describe passive waiting. It is a word rich with movement and tension. Its meaning includes:

to bind together by twisting a cord
to wrap tightly
to wait with expectation
to hope confidently
to endure tension that holds things together

Waiting, in this sense, is not inactivity. It is endurance. It is pressure. It is the strength that forms when strands are pulled tight and refuse to let go.

Living in the Tension

I have been living in that tension, qavah, waiting with expectation for redemption in my soul.

In this season, God has been gently revealing how much of my identity I’ve accepted based on brokenness rather than truth. How quickly I have labeled certain sinful reflexes, inherited wounds, and fractured patterns as “just who I am.”

But what is broken in me is not me.
It is a distortion of what God intended.

The parts of myself that do not reflect His wholeness can be painful to confront. Repentance often feels like exposure before it feels like freedom. Yet when I seek my identity in Christ, I see something entirely different; grace, love, and the original design of who I was created to be.

Shame says, “This is who you are.”
The cross says, “That weight has already been carried.”

What replaces shame is not condemnation, but conviction—the invitation to walk firmly in who God created me to be, not who I’ve always known myself to be.

The Braiding of the Cord

In qavah, I find peace. Not because the tension disappears, but because it is purposeful.

This waiting is a process of braiding:

my humanity
God’s grace
God’s truth

As those cords pull tight, they take the shape of a strong rope, capable of binding me to Him.

The Whip of Cords

This imagery brings me to another passage that has long stirred something deep in me:

“And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple…
‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.’
His disciples remembered that it was written,
‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’”
— John 2:15–17

The word cords here comes from the Greek schoinion, meaning a small braided rope, often made from twisted reeds.

For a long time, I read this passage through the lens of fear. I imagined Jesus wielding punishment, “whipping me into shape.” But when I zoom out—when I remember David’s words:

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”
— Psalm 69:9

a different picture emerges.

When the Temple Is the Heart

My heart is His temple.

And before Jesus flips tables—before things are overturned, before life feels disrupted—He makes the cords first.

He braids them.

He binds.

What if the table-flipping moments in our lives are not acts of anger, but acts of healing?

What if His zeal is not about punishment, but about presence?

He does not confront what is killing us because He despises us—but because He loves us too much to leave us fragmented, occupied, and enslaved by false identities.

At a quick glance, God can feel like our enemy.
But in truth, He is the only One righteous enough and loving enough to confront what holds us hostage.

Bound, Not Broken

The cords Jesus braided before overturning the tables were not cords of condemnation.

They were cords of love.

Cords that bind us to Him.
Cords that hold us steady in the tension.
Cords that renew our strength.

This is qavah.

And this is the promise we return to:

“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.”
— Isaiah 40:31

Cords