Daily Manna · Day 179 · June 28
Delivered and Preserved
“And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
You are not frightened of dying so much as of not finishing well. The illness, or the pull of an old habit you had assumed was dead, or the family situation with no visible exit, and underneath all three the same fear: that you will come apart before the end.
Read what Paul claims here and what he does not. This is his last letter. A few lines earlier he says he is ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand, and he has just described a first hearing at which no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. He is not writing from a good week and he is not pretending to. And he never once says he will be spared the sword. He says the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom. Delivered from evil work, not from execution. Preserved unto the kingdom, not preserved from the prison.
That distinction is the entire promise, so take it exactly as it stands. Nothing wicked, done by Rome or done by you, can knock you off the road or stop you arriving. The rescue is not out of the suffering, it is through it, the whole way home. Rome could take his life and could not touch his destination, which is why he finishes the sentence not with relief but with a doxology: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 179 is Rend Your Heart (Joel 2:13).