Daily Manna · Day 202 · July 21
Health Restored
“For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD.”
Most of us carry wounds, and some of them are much easier to name than others.
Two people can read this verse from opposite sides. One has a wound with a name and a clinic that treats it: the old injury that flares before rain, or the sleep that never came back after that hard year. The other has a wound no doctor will ever find. Somebody else caused it, or they caused it themselves, and there is no hospital department for it. The verse speaks most directly to the second person, and it does not leave out the first.
Look at who God is speaking to, because that is what gives the promise its weight. He says it over a nation He has just described as beyond help: "Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous." He adds, "There is none to plead thy cause." And He does not blame an enemy for the wound. A few verses earlier He says, "I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy," and He gives the reason: "for the multitude of thine iniquity." Then, in the same passage, comes the promise: "For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD."
That is a strange comfort, and it holds for both readers. There is no date attached to the promise, and God puts no timetable in the sentence. He puts His name on it instead. And He makes the promise as the only One in the room who has never once made the injury sound smaller than it is. The One who can honestly call your wound "incurable" is the same One who says, "I will heal thee."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 202 is Love Not the World (1 John 2:15).