Daily Manna · Day 122 · May 2
Inescapable Presence
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”
Where would you actually go?
Not rhetorically. The psalm asks it as a real question and then answers it the way a man checks every exit in a building. Heaven. The grave. The wings of the morning, which is the east, where light comes from. The uttermost parts of the sea, which for an Israelite is as far west as the world goes. Up, down, sunrise, the far edge of the water. Every door opens on the same face.
Notice what the psalm does not do. It does not apologise for the question. Verse seven stands there unretracted; the man wanted out, and the poem never tells him he was wicked to want it. It only reports what the search turned up: Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. Lead and hold. The hand that has blocked the exits is the hand steadying him at the edge of the sea.
So the question turns and comes back, and it is no longer whither. It is what you expect to find when you arrive. Cornered and carried are the same fact read by two different people, and the psalm does not tell you which reading you will make. It only gives you the fact, and leaves the rest of you to catch up to it. There is nowhere he is not. He is not there as a warden.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 122 is Looking Back (Luke 9:62).