Love Because He Heard

I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me. That is Jonah, out of the fish, and it is the same claim this psalm makes: not that God exists, not that God is good in general, but that on one particular occasion a specific voice was heard.

A ewe in a field of two hundred picks her own lamb's call out of the noise and walks to it. Nothing about that is sentimental; it is a working animal doing an ordinary thing, and it is one of the plainest facts in a field. A voice is not lost in a crowd of voices simply because the crowd is large. Being heard is a matter of who is listening for you.

And the psalmist does not begin with doctrine. He begins with an event. I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice. The reason is in the sentence, and nobody taught it to him. Then the picture: he hath inclined his ear unto me, which is a stooping word, the movement of somebody getting down to the level of a small sound rather than requiring it to be shouted. And out of that one experience he makes a decision about the rest of his life. Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. One answered prayer, and a lifetime of calling built on top of it.

So there is nothing to work out tonight. Sit still for a few minutes and let one occasion come back to you: probably small, probably years ago, possibly one you have since explained away to yourself. Do not turn it into a request or a plan. You are not calling into an empty field, and you have found that out once already.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 332 is He Became Poor (2 Corinthians 8:9).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna