Daily Manna · Day 161 · June 10
Salvation and Strength
“But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble.”
You wake before the alarm, and the sums start: what you can cover, who you could call, and how many weeks you have before it all breaks.
People have been singing about this for two hundred and fifty years. Augustus Toplady published "Rock of Ages" in 1776, and the verse everybody remembers is the one that empties your hands: "Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling." That line is about having nothing to bring, which goes deeper than feeling peaceful.
Psalm 37 says the same thing: "But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble." "Of the LORD" means rescue comes from Him and is His to give. The psalm opens with "Fret not thyself because of evildoers," and it spends thirty-eight verses on that worry before it reaches this line. It never argues that the trouble is imaginary or small. It argues that rescue was never a puzzle you were supposed to solve. Notice too when the strength comes: "in the time of trouble." You would much rather have it before the trouble, in hand and checked, but the promise is for the middle of it. The next verse says it again: "he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him."
So there is no question that God is able. The question worth holding is this: what are you still gripping in the hand the hymn says should be empty? And what would it cost you to open it now, while the trouble is still going on, rather than later when it feels safe? He has promised to be your strength right there, in the middle of it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 161 is Eaten Up (Psalm 69:9).