Daily Manna · Day 157 · June 6
Never Forsaken
“For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name's sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people.”
Wheat standing ripe in a field, and thunder over it. In that country, in that month, it does not rain. That is the picture the whole chapter hangs from.
Samuel is old and stepping down, and the nation has just demanded a king, which he tells them plainly was a rejection of God rather than of him. He calls for thunder and rain in the wheat harvest as a sign, and it comes, and the people are terrified, standing in a downpour watching their own harvest take a beating on their account. It is not a gentle scene. Then, in that weather, he says the sentence in front of you. For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name's sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people.
Notice where he anchors their security. Not in their behaviour; the storm is a comment on their behaviour. In God's name and God's pleasure. He has attached his own reputation to this people and will not become the kind of God who walks away from something he was pleased to make.
But stay out in the rain a moment longer, because Samuel is not finished. Three verses on: But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king. Same man, same speech, same weather. Security in God's character never once became permission, and the storm was over the wheat for a reason.
So do what the rain is for. Take the habit that most flatly contradicts belonging to him, the one you have assumed he stopped noticing years ago, and put one real step against it today. Not a resolution. A step somebody else could verify: the account closed, the number blocked, a friend told exactly what to ask you about on Friday.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 157 is Beginning of Wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).