Delivered from All

Someone asks how you are, and you say "fine" before the question is even finished. It comes out quickly, and because it does, nobody has heard an honest sentence from you in weeks.

Set that aside for a moment, because this psalm is not mainly about your honesty. It is a song of praise, and what it praises is one particular thing God does well: "the LORD heareth." The psalm keeps coming back to that from different sides. David says of himself, "I sought the LORD, and he heard me." He says, "This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him." He says, "his ears are open unto their cry," and then, in today's verse, "the LORD heareth." Again and again the psalm tells you that God hears and answers. It treats hearing as part of who God is, just as much as His power or His being eternal.

That is worth stopping on. The idols of the nations around Israel had to be carried, fed and kept happy, and nobody expected them to listen to someone with nothing to offer. This psalm goes further than saying God listens. It never says He hears the well-spoken or the calm. It says He hears a cry, which is a messy sound. And the next verse says, "The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart," which includes people who cannot get a word out at all.

Notice too that the rescue comes out of trouble. The verse says He "delivereth them out of all their troubles," and you can only be brought out of something you were in.

So the praise stands on its own, without any help from you. God hears. He has always heard, and He heard the ones who never managed a full sentence.

That leaves one question, and it is yours to answer. What have you been protecting by saying "fine"? He is already listening, so you can tell Him the honest version today.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 107 is If My People (2 Chronicles 7:14).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna