God Cannot Lie

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

Two people need that sentence in opposite directions, and it was first spoken in front of the one who needed it least.

The first is somebody who has been let down. A person said they would be there and were not; not maliciously, they meant it when they said it, and then life moved and the promise moved with it. You have done the same to somebody else. For that reader the verse is relief: God is not in the habit of saying a thing and then quietly renegotiating it when circumstances change.

The second is Balak. Balaam speaks this line while being paid to curse Israel, on the second of three attempts, with a king beside him who keeps moving him to a different hilltop hoping for a better result. So the sentence is a refusal before it is a comfort. God cannot be talked round, cannot be bought at a better rate, and will not be worked from another angle. From where Balak was standing, that is the worst news available.

And it runs both ways at once, which is the half usually trimmed off. Every blessing he has spoken stands. So does every warning.

Father, you are not like me. I have said things and let them go quiet, and I have half expected you to do the same to me. Hold me to what you have said, including the parts I would rather were negotiable. And in the small promises I make this week, make me a little more like you and less like the man on the hilltop looking for a better angle. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 212 is Whom Say Ye (Matthew 16:15).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna