Daily Manna · Day 279 · October 6
Every Promise Is Yes
“For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.”
A boy sits on the front step with his bag packed, at the time he was told, and then well past it.
Promises have a track record with you. Someone said they would be there and was not. You said you would change and did not. After enough of that a promise starts to sound like an opening position rather than a fact, and you learn to hold it loosely on purpose, because loose things break less.
The occasion of this verse is worth knowing. Paul is defending himself over a change of travel plans. He had said he would come to Corinth and he did not come, and they noticed, and some of them were saying his yes did not mean much. His answer is not that he is reliable. His answer is that God is not like him. All the promises of God in him are yea. Not yes eventually, not yes if the conditions hold. Yea in him, which means the yes is a person and the person has already arrived. And the Amen travels the other way, out of the congregation, which is why he says by us: the promise is God's, the agreement is ours, and the glory is his.
So which is it, honestly: has God broken a promise to you, or did you take a promise from somewhere else and write his name on it? That is not an accusation. It is worth sitting with, because from the inside the two feel identical.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 279 is That Which Was Lost (Luke 19:10).