Strength and Shield

Friend,

We are not very good at this, you and I. We call it faith, but it often works more like stamina. We hold ourselves together through the meeting, through the drive home and through dinner. Then we sit on the edge of the bed with nothing left. Without noticing, we have confused trusting God with refusing to let go.

I want you to see the order of things in Psalm 28. It begins in desperation. David begs God not to stay silent, "lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit." That is more than poetry. He is saying he will not survive if God ignores him. Then the psalm turns: "Blessed be the LORD, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications." And David gives two words for what God is to him. Strength is what you need when you have to move. A shield is what you need when moving will not help, and you simply have to stand and take what comes. But the line I keep coming back to is the small one right after them: "my heart trusted in him, and I am helped." First he leaned on God, and then the help came. David's own strength was never what saved him. And the same verse ends in joy: "therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth."

So here is what I would say if we were sitting together with our coffee going cold. You are allowed to stop. I do not mean try harder at leaning, because that is only the same stamina dressed up in religious clothes. I mean say one plain sentence to God: "I am finished carrying this by myself." Nobody will force you to say it, and I will not either. The door is open tonight, and it will still be open a month from now. I would rather you came late than never came at all.

Yours, and still learning it,

a fellow slow student

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 130 is First Love (Revelation 2:4).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna