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 breath you did not make and could never pay for. Nobody is scolding you for that. It is simply how every morning begins.
Paul is standing in Athens, a city so crowded with gods that it even had an altar "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD." To those people Paul describes a God who needs nothing from anyone. He made the world and everything in it, and He is "Lord of heaven and earth." He does not live in temples made with hands, and He is not served by human hands "as though he needed any thing." He is the One who gives: "he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." He decided the times of the nations and the borders of the lands they live in. As Paul puts it, "in him we live, and move, and have our being."
Notice how little of that is about us. Every part of it is about God. The philosophers who argued with Paul in the marketplace were breathing God's air while they argued, and God kept giving them that air the whole time.
He does not lend us breath, and He does not owe it to us. He simply gives it, to everyone, even to people who have nothing to give 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).