Daily Manna · Day 218 · August 6
Our Eyes Are Upon Thee
“O our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.”
Today's verse is a prayer King Jehoshaphat prayed when the armies of Moab, Ammon and Mount Seir were marching against Judah: "O our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee."
Look at the country he was standing in, because the land matters here. The enemy had gathered at Engedi, beside the Dead Sea, and they were coming up "by the cliff of Ziz." East of Jerusalem the land drops away toward the Dead Sea through a dry wilderness of bare ridges and stony valleys. In open country like that, you can see a dust cloud coming a long way off, and there is nothing you can do about it but watch. That is the setting for a prayer about having no strength and no plan. Even the ground seems to offer no way out.
And it is a king who says it out loud in front of the whole nation, while "all Judah stood before the LORD, with their little ones, their wives, and their children." He does not talk himself up, and he does not invent a plan nobody asked for. He states two facts: "we have no might," and "neither know we what to do." Then he finishes the sentence somewhere else entirely: "but our eyes are upon thee." Admitting he had nothing did not ruin his leadership. It was the first wise thing he did that day.
You may know the hour this describes. It is eleven at night in the kitchen. The calls have been made, the papers have been read, and the people who usually know have already been asked.
So here is a question worth asking plainly and not answering too fast. When you run out of plans, where do your eyes really go? I do not mean what you believe about God. I mean where your eyes go, at that hour, in that kitchen. Not knowing what to do is a place a person can pray from, and nobody ever has to hide it. Jehoshaphat looked to God with empty hands, and God answered him through a prophet right there in the crowd: "the battle is not yours, but God's."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 218 is Make Thy Name Great (Genesis 12:2).