Daily Manna · Day 206 · July 25
God So Near
“For 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?”
There is a fair question behind this verse. When you message somebody important, you watch the three dots appear and vanish, and then you hear nothing all evening. With people who matter, you learn to expect a wait. So why would God be any different? Is this verse anything more than national pride?
To answer, hold one picture in mind: what it took to move a god. In the world Moses was speaking into, gods travelled on people's shoulders. Their images were carried in parades, given houses, washed, fed, dressed, and carried home again. Isaiah later mocked the whole business. He describes the idols of Babylon loaded onto animals, so that "they are a burden to the weary beast," and in the end "themselves are gone into captivity." Of the people who make such gods he says, "They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him." A god carried in a parade is only ever as near as the arms bringing him, and only as strong as the people underneath him.
Now hear Moses' question: "For 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 God. He comes near because He chooses to. And the phrase attached to the promise is plain on purpose: "in all things that we call upon him for." That means all things, the small and ordinary ones as well as the great matters and the properly spiritual ones.
Notice what Moses does with this nearness, because he is not flattering anybody. The next verse says the nation's greatness also lies in the law God gave them, "statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law." His whole speech is a plea to keep it. Nearness to God was something to guard faithfully, and it was never a trophy.
So go back to the three dots. That kind of waiting belongs to a man who has to carry his own gods around and can only hope they are strong enough when he sets them down. That is not your position. Bring God the small thing you have been embarrassed to mention: the bill, or the sentence in an email you cannot get right. Say it in ordinary words on the drive in. Nothing here has to be lifted, because He has already come near.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 206 is The Windows of Heaven (Malachi 3:10).