Seasoned with Salt
Day 236 – 24 August
Morning by Morning
“The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.” (Isaiah 50:4, KJV)
The Vicar Who Installed a Telephone
In 1953 a London vicar named Chad Varah, newly arrived at the ancient church of St Stephen Walbrook in the City, installed a telephone and let it be known that anyone in despair could ring it and find a human being on the other end. He had carried the burden of the idea for years, ever since taking the funeral, early in his ministry, of a girl of fourteen whose despair had found nobody to hear it, and he intended to offer the weary his counsel. Then came the discovery that turned one telephone into the Samaritans. Callers waiting to see him sat with his volunteers, ordinary people armed with nothing but attention, and Varah noticed that many callers, having simply been listened to, needed little else; the listening itself was the medicine, and he built the whole movement on what he called befriending, the ministry of the unhurried ear. A vicar set out to give the weary his tongue and found that heaven’s order runs the other way: the ear comes first. Seven centuries before Christ, the prophet Isaiah had written that order into the most beautiful job description in the Bible.
The Servant’s Timetable
The verse is a daily timetable disguised as a testimony, and its first verb sets the footing: the Lord GOD נָתַן (natan, has given). What follows is gift before it is ever skill. The gift is לְשׁוֹן לִמּוּדִים (leshon limmudim, the tongue of the taught ones), the noun לִמּוּד (limmud, taught, discipled) grown from לָמַד (lamad, to learn), a disciple’s tongue, as the old versions have it. Its purpose is לָדַעַת לָעוּת אֶת־יָעֵף דָּבָר (lada’at la’ut et-ya’ef davar, to know how to sustain the weary with a word), and here Hebrew spends one of its rarest treasures, for the verb עוּת (ut, to sustain, succour, strengthen) appears in this verse and nowhere else in all Scripture, a one-occasion word minted, in effect, for this one mercy; Barnes hears it as strengthening the weary with a word, Darby as succouring them, and the object is a single דָּבָר (davar, word), because sustaining rarely requires a speech. Then the verse discloses where such a tongue comes from, and the timetable appears: He יָעִיר (ya’ir, wakens) בַּבֹּקֶר בַּבֹּקֶר (baboqer baboqer, morning by morning), the dawn doubled into a standing appointment, He wakens my אֹזֶן (ozen, ear) to hear כַּלִּמּוּדִים (kalimmudim, as the taught do). Notice the bracketing: limmudim stands at both ends of the verse, a taught tongue at one end and a taught ear at the other, one curriculum with two organs enrolled, and the ear’s lesson comes first in the day. Matthew Henry pressed the point into a maxim the church has never bettered: none must undertake to be teachers who have not first been learners, for Christ Himself received that He might give. Varah’s telephone discovered by experiment what Isaiah’s Servant knew by revelation: sustaining speech is downstream of morning listening.
The Weary and the Unwearied
Now weigh the person this tongue exists for: the יָעֵף (ya’ef, weary, faint one), and let Isaiah’s own great chapter on weariness supply the economics. The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the prophet had sung ten chapters earlier, faints not, neither is weary; He gives power to the ya’ef (faint), and to those who have no might He increases strength; even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men utterly fall, but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength, mounting up, running, walking, unwearied. Set those two texts side by side and the supply line of this whole week comes into view. Weariness is universal, overtaking even the strongest by nature, while the God who staffs the morning school has never once been tired, and every sustaining word we will carry to the exhausted this week is a withdrawal from His unwearied stores, wealth, as yesterday’s crown taught us, that we never minted. The disciple’s tongue never sustains from its own reserves; it delivers from His.
The Tongue That Paid for Its Words
Then the Song names its price, and the timetable becomes a passion narrative, for this is the third Servant Song, and the very next lines walk towards Jerusalem. The Lord GOD opened my ear, the Servant continues, and I was unrebellious; I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid my face from no shame and spitting. Mark the grammar the Servant Himself supplies: I gave. The sustaining tongue cost its Owner everything, and He paid willingly, the verse’s own voluntary construction telling the whole story of the cross in a single verb. And we know the Owner’s voice, for the tongue of the limmudim (taught) walked Galilee saying exactly what this verse promised it would: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, the word in season, as Gill observed, that Isaiah’s verse foresaw; the bruised reed He never broke, the smoking flax He never quenched. Best of all, the school He graduated from stands open, because four chapters later Isaiah promised that all your children shall be לִמּוּדֵי יְהוָה (limmudei YHWH, taught of the LORD), and Jesus Himself quoted that promise with its width intact: it is written in the prophets, And they shall be ALL taught of God; every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Enrolment is open to every comer, the weary included, and especially them. There stands the facet of God this Monday needs: the un-wearying Sustainer who wakens ears at dawn, whose Servant spent His tongue on the tired, and whose morning school has no closed list. His waking of the ear, be it said plainly, involves no hand upon our heads, for He is Spirit; the figure teaches the daily arrival of grace to attention, mercy new every morning knocking at the same small door.
Carrying the Morning Word
So join the timetable, and let the joining be practical. First, keep the ear’s appointment, because this series bears its convictions in its very name, every day begins with a thought, and the verse locates that thought at baboqer baboqer (morning by morning): the Word before the screens, the wakened ear before the working tongue, a listening that makes the day’s speaking possible. Second, leave the house carrying one davar (word) for one ya’ef (weary one), deliberately, the way a nurse carries the morning’s medicine; scan today’s road for its tired traveller, the school-gate mother running on four hours, the colleague back from compassionate leave, the friend whose messages have grown short, and have the sustaining sentence ready. Third, remember Varah’s discovery and Isaiah’s order when you get there: listen first, at unhurried length, and let the word land in ground the ear has softened. Sustaining words are almost always short, rest, I see you, you are held, well done, because the weary have no strength left for paragraphs, and one davar from a wakened disciple can carry a person to nightfall.
Declaration
My ear keeps a morning appointment, and my tongue makes its rounds only after it. Today I enrol again in the oldest school there is, where the taught ear comes before the taught word. Somewhere on my road is a weary one carrying more than anyone can see, and I will have a sustaining word ready, short, warm, and fitted to the load. What I spend on the tired I draw from the One who is never tired. So waken me morning by morning, and I will pass the strength along, one sentence at a time.
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