Daily Manna · Day 146 · May 26
Great and Mighty Things
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
Jeremiah was in prison when God spoke today's verse to him.
That detail is easy to miss when the verse is printed on its own. "Call unto me, and I will answer thee" was spoken to a man who was "shut up in the court of the prison." Outside, the Babylonian army had built siege ramps against Jerusalem, and God had already said the city would fall. In the chapter just before, God had told Jeremiah to do something strange: to buy a field in a land that was about to be taken over. Jeremiah weighed out "seventeen shekels of silver," signed the deed in front of witnesses, and had it put "in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days." The reason was God's own word: "Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land." So the "great and mighty things" of chapter 33 are no way of escaping the siege. They are God's promise to heal and rebuild after it: "I will bring it health and cure."
Follow this idea through the rest of Scripture and it keeps the same shape. Elisha's servant panicked at an army surrounding the city. The army stayed where it was, and Elisha prayed, "LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see." Paul asked three times for his thorn to be taken away, and he was answered with something else: "My grace is sufficient for thee." Solomon asked for "an understanding heart," and on top of it he was given riches and honour he had not asked for. In every case God answered, and in no case was the answer the shape the person had drawn.
That is exactly what the end of the verse says: "things which thou knowest not." Your not knowing does not block the promise, because it is built into it.
So when you say God has not answered, ask yourself honestly what you mean. Has He said nothing, or has He simply not said the sentence you wrote out for Him? He has promised to answer when you call, and His answer is often bigger than the one you asked for.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 146 is A Workman Unashamed (2 Timothy 2:15).