Daily Manna · Day 207 · July 26
He Will Answer
“In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me.”
It is late, and a phone lights up on the bedside table in a room too dark to be awake in. Your thumb is already moving: scroll, check, search, anything to feel less alone with what is worrying you.
The key word in this verse is "answer." In Hebrew it is anah, and it is a bigger word than "reply." It means to respond to a person and pay attention to them, and in prayer it carries the sense of answering by doing something. It is the word in Elijah's challenge on Mount Carmel: "the God that answereth by fire, let him be God." Notice also the tense the psalm chooses: "In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me." Both halves look ahead. David is deciding now what he will do later. He is setting up his reflexes before he needs them.
Read the rest of the psalm for what he does not claim. He is still "poor and needy," and "the assemblies of violent men have sought after my soul." Near the end he is still asking, "Shew me a token for good." He says God has helped and comforted him, yet his enemies are still there when the psalm closes. What he has is a God who does not go silent in the middle of trouble, even while the trouble remains.
That is where the warning is, and it deserves to be said plainly. A reflex is whatever you have practised. Suppose every small trouble for a year has gone first to a screen. Then that is where you will turn in the worst hour of your life, because no verse overrules a habit at that speed. The choice is made in the small daylight troubles, one at a time, long before the dark comes. So start today, and take the next small worry to God before you reach for the phone. David's God is "ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee," and He will answer you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 207 is Lieth at the Door (Genesis 4:7).