Daily Manna · Day 14 · January 14
The Path of Life
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”
Nobody is handed a map of their whole life. Still, you keep asking God for the plan.
He never gave David one either. David was given a psalm, and in it a path: "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." "Shew" is the old spelling of show. A path is shown the way a winding road is, one bend at a time and never all at once.
That may not sound like much to go on, but it is more than you think, because the sentence tells you where the road ends: "in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." The road does not end at a house or a job title, or even at the answer to the question you keep circling. It ends at a Person, and at a place by His right hand.
And what if the road runs through a bad year? Then it is a road through a bad year that still arrives at God. At Pentecost, Peter stood up and read these very lines of the psalm as being about the resurrection of Jesus, including the promise, "thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:25-28). The path in this psalm goes through a grave and comes out the other side.
So the full map is not coming. What you are given is the next bend in the road, and the One who knows where it ends.
What would change about today if you knew that the place you are headed is a Person, and that He is waiting for you there?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 14 is Strong as Death (Song of Solomon 8:6-7).