Daily Manna · Day 12 · January 12
All Things
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Two rooms. In the first, a man is chained by the wrist to a rotating shift of soldiers, writing a thank-you note for a cash gift, because the church at Philippi is the only one that kept sending. In the second, someone is sitting in a parked car outside a building, ten minutes early, not going in yet.
Keep the distance between those rooms. Paul is not describing your Tuesday, and pretending he is cheapens both. But look at how he defines all things, because he defines it in the sentence immediately before: I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Full is on the list beside hungry. This is a verse about capacity in either condition, not about winning, and the word behind strengtheneth means to keep pouring power into a thing from outside it.
The rooms differ in almost everything and agree in one thing. Neither man can generate what he needs.
The promise, then, stated plainly. You are not being handed a guarantee about the outcome. You are being handed enough to remain yourself inside it, in the abundance and in the shortfall alike, and it arrives at the moment of doing rather than in advance of it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 12 is In Their Sight (Numbers 13:33).