Daily Manna · Day 241 · August 29
Names Written in Heaven
“Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”
We keep score, and we are not honest about it. A word of thanks after a meeting, a prayer that seemed to land, a stretch where the work went well, and by Thursday our whole sense of standing with God is riding on the tally.
The seventy came back off the road still breathless. Jesus had sent them out two by two, without purse or scrip or shoes, into every town he intended to visit himself, and they returned with the best news they had: even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. He does not deny it. He tells them he beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven, and he hands them authority over serpents and scorpions. Then, in the same breath, he moves their joy off it. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not. Not because the power was fake, but because a register kept in heaven does not rise and fall with a week's results. Names get written there by another hand than yours.
So work out what your mood is actually resting on this morning: an outcome, a compliment, a number on a screen. Then go and do the next unimpressive thing on the list, the one nobody will thank you for, on the strength of a name that was already written before you got up.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 241 is The Unmarked Grave (Deuteronomy 34:6).