Daily Manna · Day 245 · September 2
The Giver of All
“Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;”
You are reading this on borrowed breath. That is not a rebuke. It is the plain arithmetic of the morning.
Paul stands in Athens, in a city so crowded with gods that one altar was addressed to a god nobody could name, and he describes a God who needs nothing from anyone. He made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth. He does not live in what hands built and is not served as though he lacked anything. He gives, and what he gives is life, and breath, and all things. He set the bounds of the nations and the length of their seasons. In him we live, and move, and have our being.
Notice how little of that is about us. Every clause is a clause about him. The philosophers arguing with Paul in the street were spending his air to do it, and he kept supplying it while they argued.
He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things. Not lends. Not owes. Gives, to all, including the ones with nothing to offer back. That is what he is like, and it will still be true on the day you have nothing left to bring him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 245 is Redeeming the Time (Ephesians 5:16).