Daily Manna · Day 184 · July 3
Gracious and Compassionate
“The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.”
Someone is standing outside a door they have knocked on many times before. They are practising the apology one more time, in case this is the time it is not accepted.
A great deal of praying happens at that door, and it carries a grief of its own. It is quieter than losing someone, and much harder to explain to anyone else. What wears you down is the years of coming back to God with the same failure, and the private certainty that someone is keeping a record that will one day be read back to you in order.
The psalm does not argue with that feeling, and it does not rush it. It says four things about God and lets them stand. "Gracious" means giving what nobody earned. "Full of compassion" comes from a Hebrew word built on the word for a womb, so it is the tender ache of a parent more than the ruling of a judge. "Slow to anger" is literally "long of nostrils," an old way of saying He has a long fuse. And "of great mercy" translates chesed, the loyal love that holds even after every reason to take it back has been given. This line is also an echo. God first said these words about Himself to Moses, and He said them after the golden calf, when His people had already broken faith with Him.
So there is nothing you have to do tonight to make Him this way. These four things are what He is, and nothing you have done can change them. The door you keep knocking on was never being held shut.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 184 is Shall He Live Again (Job 14:14).