Daily Manna · Day 152 · June 1
Perfect Peace
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”
Many of us have turned Isaiah 26:3 into a technique: if I keep my mind on God hard enough, I will feel calm. That technique does not work.
I am one of the people who does it. We treat "perfect peace" as a feeling we can reach by concentrating harder. So when the mind wakes up before we do and starts running through the day's list, we add a second failure to the first one. Now we are anxious, and we also feel we are bad at the verse.
Look at the words themselves. The song it belongs to is about a strong city, and two verses later it says God lays the proud city low, "even to the ground." In Hebrew, "perfect peace" is shalom shalom. The word is said twice, which is how Hebrew says the fullest kind of something. The word "stayed" describes something leaning on a support and being held up by it, the way a beam is propped because it cannot hold itself up. So the verse describes a mind that rests its weight on God. Then comes the reason: "because he trusteth in thee." The weight rests on the One being leaned on, and how tightly you grip is beside the point.
So what we keep confessing as a failure to concentrate is often a different mistake. We assumed that holding ourselves up was our job, when the verse gives that job to God.
Now stop reading. Be quiet for three minutes, without praying in words, without a verse, and without planning the day. If the list starts running, let it run past you. You are leaning on Someone who does not need your help to hold you up.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 152 is Walk in It (2 John 1:6).