Daily Manna · Day 293 · October 20
The Angel Encamped Around You
“The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.”
You check the locks twice, and it is not because you heard a noise.
Underneath that is a harder thing, and this verse can make it worse before it makes anything better. You know of people who feared God and were not rescued: the child who did not come home, or the believer whose scan came back bad a second time. If "The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him," then somebody has to say the obvious thing. From inside a hospital corridor at four in the afternoon, it does not look like anyone is camped around you.
The psalm knows this, and it is worth staying here for a while. Its heading places it after David escaped from a Philistine king by pretending to be mad. He scratched at the doors of the gate and let spit run down into his beard. Further on, this same psalm says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all." It says many, not few, so nowhere does David promise a quiet life. "Encampeth" is an army word. It means a camp is pitched and stays pitched. What it promises is Someone present all around the trouble, and it never says the trouble will not come. "Delivereth them" is real, and it means something different from "spares them."
So we are left holding both halves, and there is no honest way to put either one down: many afflictions, and a camp that does not move.
Lord, I do not understand the ones who were not spared, and I am not going to pretend I do tonight. I am not asking You to explain it. I am asking You to be what this verse says You are. Be that around this house, and around the people I cannot protect, whether or not I can see anything from here. Stay camped around us. That is my whole prayer.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 293 is Alone on the Roof (Psalm 102:7).