Daily Manna · Day 183 · July 2
The Faithful God
“Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.”
A woman in her eighties says grace at a table where she is the only one who prays. Her son waits politely, and her grandson is on his phone. For eleven years she has been the last believer in that room.
So it is fair to ask a hard question. A verse that promises covenant mercy "to a thousand generations" can sound hollow at her table, where the chain broke within one generation. If the promise is so reliable, why does it look as though it stopped with her?
Read what Moses attaches to the promise. God "keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations." The promise is huge, and it has a shape. Loving God and keeping His commandments are one road, and the promise runs to the people who walk it. So this verse does not guarantee that your children and grandchildren will inherit your faith automatically. Deuteronomy never pretends that, and the very next verse speaks of "them that hate him." What the verse does guarantee is that God Himself stays reliable, over a span so long that nobody in the room will live to see the end of it. No one has ever traced a family tree a thousand generations long. The number is meant to be longer than anyone's memory, and longer than anyone's discouragement.
So go back to that table. Measured against a thousand generations, she stands much nearer the start of a line than the end of one. The faithfulness she leans on will still hold long after everyone at that table is gone. The chain was never made out of her family. It is made out of God, and she has hold of it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 183 is The Rest Of The Verse (2 Chronicles 16:9).