Daily Manna · Day 194 · July 13
All Your Need Supplied
“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
The number in your account and the number you owe are not on speaking terms this month.
Go outside for the argument. Nothing that grows in a field holds a reserve; a wheat plant lives on what falls in that season and stores none of it for the next. The farmer in James waits for the early and the latter rain, which in that country are two distinct rains, months apart, one to soften the ground for sowing and one to swell the grain before harvest, and no one can schedule either. A crop is not a bank balance. It is a series of arrivals in the right order, and a field given all its water in one week rots.
That is the shape of the promise. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Not out of his riches, which would mean a portion handed over from a pile. According to, which is a measure rather than an amount, the way a wealthy man's giving matches his wealth instead of depleting it. And need is not appetite. The God who supplies is also the one who defines the word, and that is the comfort and the sting in a single clause.
Look who it was written to. This church had just sent Paul money it could not spare, and had sent to him more than once before; he says a few lines earlier that they had communicated with his affliction. The promise lands on people with open hands. It was never addressed to spectators.
So pray it as somebody standing in a field rather than holding a statement.
God, I do not know when the rain comes and I know I cannot make it. Feed me in season, and teach me the difference between what I need and what I want, since I have been using the words interchangeably for years. Keep my hands open while the account is low. That is the half I cannot do. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 194 is The Wolf and the Lamb (Isaiah 11:6).