Daily Manna · Day 247 · September 4
Precious Thoughts
“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.”
We are better at being useful than at being loved. Usefulness we can audit. Being thought about while we sleep is harder to believe in on a silent morning.
Pick up a handful of sand and you are holding more grains than you could count in a working day. That is the measure David reaches for, and he reaches for it because he has already given up on numbers. He avoids saying God's thoughts toward him are many. He says he tried the sum and the beach beat him.
The line that does the real work comes next: when I awake, I am still with thee. He does not say God resumed at sunrise. He says he surfaced back into something that had been running the whole time he was unconscious and contributing nothing whatever to it. The counting stops. The thoughts do not.
Tomorrow, keep your eyes shut for the length of one breath and let one sentence go first: I woke, and you were already here. Do it for a week and see what the silent house sounds like by the end of it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 247 is Except It Die (John 12:24).