Daily Manna · Day 307 · November 3
A Special People
“For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.”
What do you think God chose you for?
This verse is quoted often. The next two verses almost never are, and they are there to stop the way most people read it. Moses says plainly, "The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people." Then he says it again from the other side: "But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers." So God chose them because He loved them. There is nothing underneath that love for anyone to point to.
That means this verse does not say they were chosen because they showed promise. "Holy" does not mean better than others; it means set apart for God's use. Two chapters later Moses reminds them that they are "a stiffnecked people," set apart even while they behaved badly. Nor were they chosen instead of everyone else, whatever "above all people" may sound like in English. Moses points back to the promise God made to their fathers, and the promise to Abraham was, "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." The Hebrew word behind "special people" is the word for a king's own treasure. It is the thing a king keeps back from the storehouse because he wants it, even when it serves no practical use.
So the place you keep trying out for is one you already hold.
May you stop auditioning for a part that was given to you before you could read. May you see yourself as God's own treasure, kept close because He loves you. And may that love, which rests on nothing but itself, turn out to be the one thing you cannot argue your way out of today.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 307 is After the Fire (1 Kings 19:12).