Daily Manna · Day 196 · July 15
Joy as Strength
“Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our LORD: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
On the day Ezra read the law, the weeping crowd was sent home with orders to eat fat meat, drink something sweet, and send plates out the door to houses where nothing was cooking.
This whole passage is set around a table. The people had gathered "into the street that was before the water gate," and Ezra had read the law to them "from the morning until midday" while the Levites explained it. They wept, because "all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law." They had just heard how far they had drifted from God. The instruction given to these weeping people is a menu: "Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared."
Eating the fat means eating the rich part of the meat. Drinking the sweet means sweet things to drink, the kind you save for a celebration. Sending portions means a plate leaving your table for a household with nothing on theirs. All three are things you do with your hands, and they are given as the cure for grief over sin. Then comes the reason, the one line everybody remembers: "for the joy of the LORD is your strength." In the verse, that line comes attached to food and to a neighbour. When we pull it away from them, it turns into a slogan.
Notice also whose joy it is. It is "the joy of the LORD," His own joy, given as strength to people who at that moment had no strength of their own. If it were our joy about Him, we would be in charge of producing it.
Most of us assume gladness is the reward for getting right with God. Here it comes first. It was the assignment given before anybody felt better: a meal they were told to eat and a plate they were told to send. And they did it: "all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words." So set your table today, send one plate to someone who has nothing on theirs, and let the Lord's joy be your strength.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 196 is A Soft Answer (Proverbs 15:1).