Removed Completely

The objection is fair, so let it be put properly. One line of poetry about east and west does not feel like enough for what you actually did. You can recite the thing in your sleep. It surfaces while you are brushing your teeth or halfway through a hymn, and a metaphor about compass points does not reach it.

So notice who this psalm puts on the page five verses earlier. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. Moses is the psalm's named example of a man God dealt with intimately, and Moses had a body in the sand. He killed an Egyptian, looked this way and that way, saw no man, hid him, and then ran for forty years when it turned out somebody had. Whatever was later built between that man and God was not built by pretending it had not happened. Exodus records it in the plainest available terms, and he is still the one God speaks with face to face.

Now the measurement. North and south have poles; travel far enough north and you are going south again, and the distance closes. East and west never meet at any point on the earth. The psalm chose the axis that does not close, and it chose it deliberately. And look at the tense: so far hath he removed. Not is removing. Not will remove once you have suffered a decent interval over it.

So the truth is not that your memory has the size of the thing wrong. It is that the distance was set by someone who knew the size of it exactly. What comes back tomorrow, and it will come back, is a memory. It is not a charge. There is nothing at the far end of it any more.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 160 is At Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:6).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna