Daily Manna · Day 140 · May 20
Preserved by Love
“The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.”
Picture a hospital corridor on a Thursday afternoon, and a family who had prayed. They prayed properly, often and together, out loud in front of each other. The person they were praying for died anyway, at about four o'clock.
Somebody will probably read this psalm at the funeral: "The LORD preserveth all them that love him." It is fair to ask what that sentence is doing in a room like that. God's people have sung this psalm for many centuries. All that time they were burying their own dead, and they never changed the line.
That tells you what the promise means and what it does not mean. Psalm 145 is a song of praise, an alphabet poem in Hebrew that walks through the greatness of God one letter at a time. Near the end it turns hard. Here, being preserved does not mean being spared from every harm. The same psalm has already said, "The LORD upholdeth all that fall," and you only need holding up if you fall. The second half of our verse is not softened either: "but all the wicked will he destroy." Love in this verse is no fee that buys protection. It is the direction a life faces. One life is turned toward God, and He keeps it, even through fire if it comes to that. The other life is turned away from Him, and God will not keep a person against their will forever.
So the question is offered to you, and nobody is pushing you into it: which way is your life facing? Do not judge it by what you believe about yourself. Judge it by the last seven days: your calendar, your spending, your temper at home. If the answer troubles you, God is ready to hear from you tonight, and He has kept people who were much further away than you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 140 is If Need Be (1 Peter 1:7).