Daily Manna · Day 182 · July 1
Hidden in Trouble
“For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.”
It may be that nobody in your house knows what this week is doing to you.
David wrote this verse with enemies close enough to name, and he reached for two pictures, a pavilion and a tabernacle. A pavilion is a king's tent in a war camp, and to be inside it was to be under the personal protection of the man who commanded the army. The "secret" of the tabernacle was its hidden inner part, and nobody could just wander in there. Behind both pictures stood a custom everyone knew. A man in danger could run to the sanctuary and take hold of the horns of the altar. When Adonijah was afraid of King Solomon, that is exactly what he did (1 Kings 1:50).
You have a car, a bathroom door that locks, and a phone that will not stop ringing. There is no altar within driving distance. Even so, the gap between David's day and yours is smaller than it looks, because the promise was never about the cloth of the tent. It was about whose tent it is. Look closely at when the hiding happens: "in the time of trouble he shall hide me." David is hidden in the middle of the trouble, while it is still going on. The week stays the same week, and what changes is where he is inside it. Then comes one more line: "he shall set me up upon a rock." That is the opposite of hiding. A man on a rock stands up high where everyone can see him, and still nobody can reach him.
So pray it in the plainest words you have.
God, I have been carrying this since Monday, and nobody knows what it is doing to me. Take me into Your inner room. I am not asking You to take me out of this week. Hide me while I am in it. And when You have, set me up on a rock, somewhere I can stand. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 182 is Thou Tellest (Psalm 56:8).