Daily Manna · Day 255 · September 12
Answered Before Calling
“And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”
A man sits in his car outside his own house with the engine off, rehearsing the sentence he means to pray. He has been rehearsing it for four days. He still does not go in.
What is it we think the wording buys? Nobody would say out of the front of their mind that God responds better to a well-built sentence. Everybody behaves as though he does.
Isaiah is describing a world God is going to make, and of all the things he could have chosen to say about it, he says this. Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Look at the two halves. The answering runs ahead of the request, and the hearing overlaps the speech, which means it does not stop while you fumble the middle of it. That is a description of the coming world and it is a description of the God who is listening tonight, since he does not acquire the habit later.
So the question stands, and nothing about it is rhetorical. If the answer is already moving, what exactly are the four days for?
May the clumsy sentence be enough. May you be heard in the middle of it, long before you find the end of it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 255 is Except Thou Bless Me (Genesis 32:26).