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. He is practising the sentence he means to pray. He has been practising it for four days, and he still has not gone in.
What do we think the right words will buy us? Nobody would say out loud that God answers a well-built sentence more readily, but many of us act as if He does.
Isaiah is describing the new world God is going to create, and of all the things he could record about it, he records God saying this: "before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear." Look at the two halves. The answer is on its way before the asking begins. And the hearing goes on while you are still speaking, so it does not stop while you stumble through the middle. This describes the world to come, and it also describes the God who is listening to you tonight, because He is already the God He will be then.
So here is a real question to sit with. If the answer is already on its way, what are the four days of practising for?
May your 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).