Set in Families

Friend,

Picture a room full of people, with a table of drinks and a lot of talk. You are good at the handshake and the short answer. Forty minutes in, you check the time, because this is the loneliest hour of your week, and nobody in the room knows it.

Look at who is doing the action in this verse: "God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains." In this psalm, God is the One who arranges belonging. You do not earn it by becoming easier to like. The psalm is also a marching song. It opens with "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered," and a little later it pictures God marching through the wilderness ahead of His people. So placing lonely people into households is part of what God does as He goes forward. It is no consolation prize for people who missed the main event. The Hebrew word translated "solitary" means the only one, the one who is alone. It is the same word used of an only child, as when God told Abraham to take "thine only son Isaac."

There is a line here that most people step over, and I am not going to step over it for you: "but the rebellious dwell in a dry land." Family is a gift, and it is also possible to refuse the gift and stay dry and thirsty. Some of the loneliest people I have known chose that dry land quietly, because it felt less risky than sitting down at a table with others.

So accept the next invitation, even the awkward one, even if you leave early. If no invitation is coming, send one yourself this week to one person, before you talk yourself out of it.

And here is a blessing over you as you go. May God, who sets the solitary in families, set you in one. May He lead you out of whatever is holding you in chains. And may there be a chair with your name on it in a room you have not yet walked into.

Yours.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 174 is My Redeemer Liveth (Job 19:25).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna