Many Christians have found comfort from the poem, “Footprints in the Sand.” It teaches that God will never abandon His children but carries them through the hardest times of their lives. While there is no specific Scripture quoted in that poem, Isaiah 46 offers similar encouragement. Here the LORD assures His people that He has carried them from the womb and will continue to carry them even to old age and gray hair. Whether times are hard or easy, there is not one moment when God is not carrying you and me along (v 3-4). Isaiah’s point is that God is trustworthy; He is both strong and caring. So if He has promised to carry us all the way home, why not gladly acknowledge our dependence on Him and enjoy the ride? If we do not trust and worship our Maker, the alternative is to choose our own gods and carry them! (v 5-7). The chapter opens with some mockery of a couple Babylonian gods named “Bel” and “Nebo.” Both were annually carried through the streets as part of a great New Year Festival. They were seen as tokens of good fortune for the coming year. But Isaiah looks at these heavy idols wearing out the beasts which are carrying them, and sees an obvious problem. If a god has to be carried, how can it carry you? If a god needs help, how it can save you? (v 1-2). John Oswalt notes, “Few in the Western world have idols that they carry with them from place to place,” but “many contemporary persons are carrying a whole host of gods, and the burden is killing them.… perhaps a job, a house, a car, a love relationship, or even one’s self-image… These are the things that give us our sense of identity and meaning in life. Yet many of us are suffering from burnout or breakdown because we have all these things to carry and they have become too much for us.” Isaiah’s answer is to “stop carrying those things and let the One who is in fact carrying us anyway do it for us. The issue is whether we are willing to entrust all those aspects of our lives that we feel are so necessary to us into God’s hands. If we are not willing, we effectively make them idols and try to use them to provide things only God can provide.” Every idol will ultimately fail us. Few readers today will have any idea who Bel and Nebo are, but millions of people still worship the God of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So each of us is called upon to make a decision. Will we hold firmly to the truth of who God is? Will we yield our lives to Him? The LORD is always working out His plan, even using Cyrus the Great, a mere “bird of prey,” for His own redemptive purposes. Our part is to trust Him (v 8-13). For further meditation: