Daily Manna · Day 305 · November 1
Good to All
“The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.”
You can believe God is good in general and still suspect he is not good to you, and most people who have prayed for a long time about one thing know exactly what that feels like.
So look at the word the psalm uses for how his mercies sit over his works. Over. Not distributed among, not applied to the deserving portion of. Over, the way a roof is over a house, which covers the parts of the building nobody would choose and the rooms nobody visits and the corner where the damp is. A roof does not consult the state of the room beneath it. That is what makes it a roof rather than a reward.
The psalm is an acrostic and its drumbeat is the word all: good to all, mercies over all his works, all thy works shall praise thee, the eyes of all wait upon thee. And it is a hard psalm too, which is worth saying, since the same poem ends by saying all the wicked will he destroy. This is not a claim that nothing matters. It is a claim about the reach of the roof while the house stands.
You were made by him. That is the entire qualification the verse asks for, and you meet it whether or not this season looks like evidence of anything.
So you are welcome to go looking for the small print of it. Not as an exercise, and not tonight if you are too tired. Whenever you next notice one, the tea somebody made you, the fact that you slept, the message from your sister that arrived at the right hour, you may take it as roofing rather than as coincidence.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 305 is Smote the Rock Twice (Numbers 20:11).