Daily Manna · Day 25 · January 25
Refuge from the Storm
“For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.”
Picture a wall with the wind beating against it, and someone standing in the narrow strip of shelter beside it, because there is nowhere else to stand.
Maybe the furnace broke in February, and the repair quote came back higher than what is in your account. You have done the sums three times, hoping the numbers will move, and they do not. This season is not something you are managing; you are taking its blows. And the tiredness that comes from taking blows is a different kind of tiredness altogether.
Isaiah sings this line while looking at a city that has been turned into a heap. He does not pretend about the weather: "the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall," and the heat has not let up. Nothing in the verse says the storm ends. What it does say is that there is shelter standing inside the storm. It also says exactly who that shelter was built for: "a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress." God does not save it for the clever ones or for those who are holding everything together. His help is addressed to low ground, and low ground is where you live right now.
So there is no hard lesson to squeeze out of this today. If you want something to do, do the small honest thing and tell the real number to someone who can help you carry it. The needy are the ones God helps, and that is the whole point of the verse. Notice too that Isaiah says "thou hast been." Isaiah is describing what God has already done, again and again, for people standing where you stand.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 25 is Let This Mind (Philippians 2:5).