Daily Manna · Day 22 · January 22
Daily Loaded
“Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.”
Picture a crowd walking along a road in the hill country, going up to the sanctuary. The song they are singing begins with almost the same words Moses spoke whenever the ark set out: "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered."
Halfway through, the song stops talking about armies and starts talking about weather: "Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance, when it was weary." It is the same God in the same psalm. In that country rain was much more than pleasant. It was the difference between a harvest and a famine, and it came without anybody arranging it. Out of that comes verse 19: "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits." "Loadeth" is a word for freight. It pictures weight being piled onto a cart or a pack animal. Then comes "Selah." Nobody knows for sure what that word means, but it is usually read as a pause.
So take the pause. Last week rain fell somewhere on ground you have never seen. The wheat in the bread you ate this morning grew because of rain that fell long before you thought to ask for any. Yesterday your lungs took about twenty thousand breaths without you having to watch over a single one.
The psalm is making a claim about God, and the claim is that His loading is daily and it is heavy. It goes on whether you notice it or not. And the One who does the loading is named in the same line as "the God of our salvation." The everyday gifts and the great rescue come off the same cart, from the same generous hands.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 22 is When I Awake (Psalm 17:15).