Stranded in the Cook Islands Since 2023, One Man's Long Wait for a Way Home

Ruchira has wanted the same single thing for years — one transit visa, one flight, one way back to Sri Lanka. What makes his situation so hard to read about is how little has changed: the desire hasn't dimmed, the island hasn't become home, and yet nothing has moved either, because the change he needs isn't his to grant. It sits in an office, in a process, in hands he has never shaken.

That is the kind of waiting Isaiah was written into. The prophet's words were addressed to exhausted exiles who also could not hurry their way home — and notice what the verse never says. It never promises the journey will be short. Its comfort is stranger than that: the everlasting God does not grow weak or weary the way waiting people do, and he gives strength to the powerless before the door opens, not after. We usually measure a wait by whether it ends. Isaiah locates the promise inside the waiting itself.

We should be honest about what the verse does not do. It is not a visa. It does not guarantee Ruchira reaches Sri Lanka this year or any year, and his long wait is not evidence of weak faith or a test he is failing. But it does expose something about us: when we're stuck on an approval, an answer, or an open door whose timing belongs to someone else, we often respond by trying to manufacture our own endurance — gritting through, pretending not to be tired. The verse invites a different posture. Bring the weariness to God as it is. Maybe today that looks like one honest sentence of prayer instead of another hour of refreshing an inbox.

The waiting itself is not the last word. But in it, we can stop asking our own strength to do what only the everlasting God does not run out of.