Daily Manna · Day 119 · April 29
Everlasting Joy
“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
You watched a friend get out of something this year. A debt, a hospital, a marriage that was killing her. You noticed she sings in the car again, and you noticed something else underneath the noticing, which was closer to envy than you would like.
Isaiah 35 is a road chapter. Before the singing there is a highway, and it is described carefully: a way, called the way of holiness, which the unclean do not travel, on which no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast, and on which the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. It is a road built for people who are not clever enough to find their own way. And then verse 10 names who is on it. The ransomed of the LORD shall return. Ransomed, not resilient. Not the ones who fought their way out. The ones whose release was paid for by somebody else.
Watch the details. Everlasting joy upon their heads, which is a crown they did not make and are not holding on. They shall obtain joy and gladness, obtain being a word for catching up with something that was ahead of you. And sorrow and sighing shall flee away, which is not a fading; it is the word for an army breaking and running.
Lord, we have been comparing. We looked at somebody else's release and did our own arithmetic and came up short, and we have not said that to anyone. If we are honest, part of what we envy is not her freedom but her singing, and we cannot manufacture it and have stopped trying.
We have not paid our own way out of anything. We are not able to. That is the whole of what we have to bring this morning, and this chapter says it is the qualification for the road. Ransom us, and put us on it, and let the singing come when it comes. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 119 is Turn Thou Us (Lamentations 5:21).