Daily Manna · Day 287 · October 14
Mercy Holds You Up
“When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.”
You know the sound you make when your foot goes. It is not a word. Black ice, or the top step in the dark, and your body knows before your mind is told.
The psalm is a list, and it is worth reading as one. It opens with an inventory of what the arrogant were doing: they break in pieces thy people, they afflict thine heritage, they slay the widow and the stranger, they murder the fatherless, and they say the LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. Six charges, and the last is the one that stings, because it is the accusation that God is not paying attention.
Then the psalmist answers with a second list, and it is entirely first person. When I said, My foot slippeth, thy mercy, O LORD, held me up. In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul. The LORD is my defence, and my God is the rock of my refuge. Three items: caught in the fall, steadied in the racing mind, and given ground to stand on afterwards. Notice the tense in the first one. My foot slippeth, present, mid-air. And notice which attribute arrives. Not justice, which had every right to let the fall finish. Mercy, and it got there before he landed.
Lord, I have called several of those catches luck. The night I nearly sent it. The week I nearly walked out. Thank you for the ones I never noticed, which I assume are most of them. My thoughts are loud again tonight, and I am asking for the second item on the list as much as the first. Hold me up, and be the ground.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 287 is No Man Could Number (Revelation 7:9).