Daily Manna · Day 123 · May 3
Known Days
“The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.”
Today's verse is a promise in two halves: "The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever." The first half says God knows your days. The second half tells you what that knowing is worth.
Psalm 37 is one long comparison that runs for forty verses. The wicked seem to flourish, but "they shall soon be cut down like the grass." Meanwhile, "the meek shall inherit the earth." In the middle of that comparison, verse eighteen sets down the word knoweth. In the Psalms, when God knows someone, it is more than having information about them. It is attention that acts. Think of a clerk who keeps a record of how long people live, from a distance, for a chart. God is not counting the days of the upright like that. He is watching over them and keeping them.
The word upright matters too. This promise is not for everyone in general. It is made to the person who walks straight with God, and that is what the psalm spends forty verses describing: "Trust in the LORD, and do good"; "Delight thyself also in the LORD"; "Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him"; "Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him." Three times it says, "fret not thyself."
Inheritance is a family word. Workers are paid wages for what they have done, but children inherit because of whose children they are. The upright receive what God gives them because they belong to Him. And this inheritance has a length: it lasts "for ever."
Your own calendar can only see a few weeks ahead, and beyond that it is guessing. God's calendar never runs out. What He has set aside under your name is not rented to you for a while and then taken back. It is yours for ever, because He knows your days and He keeps them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 123 is Understandest Thou (Acts 8:30).