Daily Manna · Day 258 · September 15
Singing of Mercies Forever
“I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.”
Psalm 89 has a heading that names its writer, Ethan the Ezrahite. His first line is one of the most confident in the whole book of Psalms: "I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations."
The psalm does not stay confident. God had sworn to David, "Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations." But from verse thirty-eight on, Ethan writes, "thou hast cast off and abhorred, thou hast been wroth with thine anointed," and "thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground." In plain words, it looks to him as if God has thrown away His chosen king. So the psalm that began by singing of mercy for ever ends up asking, "How long, LORD?" Ethan promised to make God's faithfulness known to all generations while he watched the promise to David seem to fall apart. That is the setting of his opening line, and it was not written on a good day.
Your family probably knows the story of the layoff, or the scan, or the year nobody talks about. What they often do not know is how God was with you in it. That part feels strange to say at the dinner table, so it stays private. And so the story of God's faithfulness stops with you, quietly, and nobody notices for twenty years.
Ethan had every reason to keep quiet. Instead he aimed his song at people who were not yet born, writing from a generation that had watched the crown thrown to the ground. Because he spoke up, his psalm is here for you to read this morning. God's mercy is still worth telling, and the next generation can only hear it if someone like you tells them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 258 is As It Hath Pleased Him (1 Corinthians 12:18).