Daily Manna · Day 226 · August 14
Inherit the Earth
“Those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.”
An old man is talking. He says so in the middle of the psalm: I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken. Whatever you make of that claim, it tells you the vantage point. This is a long life's worth of watching people cut the line and get away with it.
And the psalm answers with a list, which is worth walking rather than summarising, because the list is the argument.
Fret not thyself because of evildoers. That is first, and it is repeated three times in the opening eight verses; the Hebrew word is about heating up.
Trust in the LORD, and do good.
Delight thyself also in the LORD.
Commit thy way unto the LORD.
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him.
Cease from anger, and forsake wrath.
Six imperatives, and not one of them is a strategy for winning. They are instructions about what to do with your hands and your temper while somebody else is being rewarded for bending the rules you kept.
Which brings you to your verse. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. The psalm never suggests you imagined the injustice. The half people leave off is a hard sentence, and it is the reason the other half is not naive.
Which is the truth, and it is smaller and harder than the version usually offered. What is being asked of you is a delay, not a denial. The land goes to the people who were willing to wait for it to be handed over rather than take it, and waiting of that kind looks, from the outside and quite often from the inside, exactly like losing.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 226 is Blessed Are the Dead (Revelation 14:13).