Daily Manna · Day 199 · July 18
Rejoice and Shout for Joy
“But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy.”
What would you have to believe for gladness to be honest?
The psalm does not hand the shouting to everybody. It hands it to a named group, all those that put their trust in thee, and the entry requirement is trust rather than a mood or a good week. Look at where it sits. This is the same psalm that opens with a man asking God to consider his meditation because he cannot get the words out, and the men in it are plotting, their throat is an open sepulchre. The joy is prescribed inside that, not after it. And the verse finishes by explaining the noise: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. In thee, not in the circumstances, and the reason it can hold is in the same breath, because thou defendest them.
So do it in that order rather than waiting for the order to reverse. Put one situation into his hands this morning in a single sentence. Then sing something on the way in, badly, and let the noise follow the decision rather than the evidence.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 199 is Moved With Compassion (Matthew 9:36).