Daily Manna · Day 17 · January 17
Stronghold
“The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.”
You have a friend who says God is good, and you have watched what this year did to her.
Nahum said it under worse conditions. He was a Judean writing about Nineveh, capital of the empire that had emptied the northern tribes off their land, that boasted in its own palace inscriptions about flaying prisoners and stacking their heads at city gates, and that had stood outside Jerusalem's wall within living memory. This is not a man with an untested opinion about divine goodness. And his sentence about goodness is dropped into the middle of an oracle of destruction: one verse after who can stand before his indignation, one verse before he will make an utter end of the place thereof. The middle clause is the one that gets skipped. He knoweth them that trust in him. Knows, personally, by name, in a chapter about an empire being erased. Same fire, two outcomes, and trust is what stands between them.
Nahum's whole book is aimed at the power that crushed people like your friend. Not one line of it is aimed at her.
So what you watched this year did not come from a God who is casually, weatherlessly good. It came in a world where Nineveh exists and is not yet finished. Go to her. Take the meal, the afternoon with the kids, the drive to the appointment. Do not take an explanation. He knows them that trust in him, and He has never once asked you to defend Him to her.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 17 is A Brand From the Fire (Zechariah 3:2).