God So Near

The objection is easy to state and hard to shake off. You message somebody who matters, watch the three dots appear and vanish, and hear nothing that evening. With people who count, you learn to expect a wait. Why would God be different, and is this verse anything more than national pride?

Hold one picture through the answer: what it takes to move a god. In the world Moses is speaking into, gods travelled on shoulders. They were carried in procession, housed, washed, fed, dressed, and carried home again. Isaiah later made a joke of it: the idols were a burden to the weary beast, and when the city fell the gods themselves went into captivity. A god carried in procession is only ever as near as the arms bringing him, and exactly as strong as the people underneath.

Now Moses asks his question. What nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? Nobody is carrying this one. He is near on his own initiative, and the phrase attached is deliberately unglamorous: in all things that we call upon him for. All things, not the great matters, and not only the tastefully spiritual ones.

And notice what Moses does with the nearness, because he is not flattering anybody. The next verse locates the nation's greatness in the law God gave them, and the whole speech is a plea to keep it. Nearness was a trust, never a trophy.

So go back to the three dots. That is the position of a man who has to carry his own gods about and hope they are strong enough when he sets them down. It is not yours. Bring him the small thing you have been embarrassed to mention, the bill, the sentence in an email you cannot get right, and say it in ordinary words on the drive in. Nothing here has to be lifted.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 206 is The Windows of Heaven (Malachi 3:10).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna