Near to All

The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.

There are seasons when that sentence is a wall you are standing on the wrong side of. You call, and the room stays a room. You have not rebelled. You have not stopped believing it. You simply have no evidence this week, and the verse goes on being true at you from a distance.

Notice that the psalm states the condition and then immediately repeats it, and repetition in Hebrew poetry is emphasis rather than filler. To all them that call upon him. To all that call upon him in truth. The word carries the sense of what is firm and reliable, so the test is not whether the prayer felt raw enough. It is whether the calling was honest. Which is a smaller thing to ask and a harder one to do. And the psalm does not soften the other side to make the nearness sweeter: two verses on, all the wicked will he destroy. Nearness here is a response, not a climate.

Still, the report and the experience do not match, and this is the part that usually goes unsaid in rooms where people are supposed to be encouraged. Sometimes the gap lasts years. The psalm puts no date on the nearness anywhere.

So pray it as it stands. Lord, you say you are near to all who call in truth. Here is the truth. I have called and I have not found you near. I will not pretend otherwise to make the sentence work. I am calling anyway. Come near, or hold me while I keep calling until you do.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 15 is A Ready Writer (Psalm 45:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna