Strength and Shield

Friend,

We are not good at this, you and I. We call it faith and it behaves like stamina. We hold it together through the meeting, through the drive home, through dinner, and then sit on the edge of the bed with nothing left, having quietly confused trusting God with not letting go.

I want you to see the order of events in Psalm 28. It starts desperate. The man says that if God stays silent toward him he will become like them that go down into the pit, which is not poetry, that is a man saying he will not survive being ignored. Then the psalm turns and gives two words for what God is. Strength, which is what you need in order to move. Shield, which is what you need when moving is not the answer and you simply have to stand there and take it. But the line I keep returning to is the small one wedged between them. My heart trusted in him, and I am helped. Leaned first. Helped after. He was not rescued for being strong. He was rescued once he stopped performing strength.

So here is what I would say if we were sitting down with the coffee going cold. You are allowed to stop. Not to try harder at leaning, which is only the same stamina in a religious coat, but to say the plain sentence: I am finished carrying this by myself. Nobody will make you say it, and I am not going to. The door is open tonight and it will still be open in a month, and I would rather you came late than not 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