A Pillar in the Temple

Maybe you have moved four times in six years: a new town, a new church, and boxes never fully unpacked. Or maybe nothing moved at all, and the ground under you shifted anyway.

Take this promise back to the town it was first sent to, because Philadelphia makes the picture clear. The city sat in an earthquake region in what is now western Turkey. In the year 17, an earthquake destroyed it along with eleven other cities of the province of Asia, and the shaking went on for years. The ancient geographer Strabo wrote that the walls of its houses were always cracking, so most of the people lived out in the countryside instead of in the city. In a town like that, a pillar that stays standing is far more than a nice image. It is a picture of the very thing the people there longed for.

Now read the promise as those people would have heard it: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out." Going out was exactly what they did when the shaking started. And hold on to the condition, because the whole sentence hangs on it. This is said to the one who overcomes. Christ has just told this small church, "thou hast a little strength," and He has said, "hold that fast which thou hast." The promise of permanence is offered to people who are still holding on.

So the promise is exact, and it is worth not stretching it. It never promises that the ground stops moving, and this church was never told that. It says you are made part of God's house itself, more than a visitor living in it, and that you will never be sent out again. It says three names are written on you: the name of God, the name of His city, the new Jerusalem, and Christ's own new name. Whatever you are holding on to this week, Christ is making you into something that stays.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 209 is Not Unto Us (Psalm 115:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna