Daily Manna · Day 277 · October 4
Never Confounded
“Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.”
Doubt about your faith usually comes at you sideways. It might be a raised eyebrow at work, a relative who says you will grow out of it, or an article that treats your faith as a way of coping with life. It lands, because a quiet part of you wonders whether you have bet your one life on a story.
Peter answers that fear by quoting Isaiah, and the striking thing is that the quote is not about you at all: "Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious." God laid this stone on purpose, in a place He chose. The word "elect" means chosen out from everything else, and "precious" means of great worth. Peter has already said the same of Jesus two verses earlier, calling Him a stone "chosen of God, and precious," even though men had rejected Him. Every part of the quote is a fact about the stone, and it stays true whether anyone ever stands on it or not.
Peter does not stop at the comfort. He goes straight on to another line from Isaiah: the same stone is "a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence." Nobody can stay neutral about a cornerstone. You either build on it or trip over it. That keeps the promise from going soft: "he that believeth on him shall not be confounded." To be confounded means to be put to shame, left exposed on the day everything is finally seen for what it was.
So take the promise as wide as it was written. It never promises the raised eyebrows will stop, or that you will win the argument in the hallway. It says the stone was laid, chosen and called precious before anybody asked you to put your weight on it. Nothing a room thinks of you can move it, and whoever builds on it will never be put to shame.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 277 is Another Spirit (Numbers 14:24).