Daily Manna · Day 195 · July 14
Pour Out Your Heart
“Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us.”
A man in a parked car, mid-sentence, hears himself and starts again in a better voice. He came out here to say something true and it is arriving churchier than the feeling.
Take the verse apart for what it does not require. Pour out is the verb for emptying a vessel, used of water tipped onto the ground and of the drink offering. Nothing is said about the contents being fit to offer, or about arranging your thoughts first, or reaching a conclusion. At all times sits in the same sentence, and that explicitly includes the times you are not composed.
And it avoids saying God is indifferent to what comes out, which is the opposite misreading. The reason given for the pouring is the last clause: God is a refuge for us. A refuge is a place with walls. What is said inside a fortress does not get out and cannot be used against you afterward.
So the promise is small and it is enough. There is somewhere you can empty the whole jug, resentment with a name attached, fear with a person's name in it, and you will not be put out for it. He has been a refuge for us. Not may become one, if the material proves acceptable.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 195 is The Hand Put Out (Ephesians 4:32).