Love Because He Heard

When Jonah prayed from inside the great fish, he said, "I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me." Psalm 116 makes the same kind of claim. It is about one particular day, when one particular voice was heard.

Think of a mother sheep in a field of two hundred. When her own lamb calls, she picks out that one cry from all the noise and walks straight to it. There is nothing sentimental about that. It is a working animal doing an ordinary thing, and it is one of the plainest facts of farm life. A voice is not lost in a crowd just because the crowd is big. Whether you are heard depends on who is listening for you.

The psalm does not begin with a doctrine. It begins with something that happened: "I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications." The reason for his love is right there in the sentence, and it came from his own experience. Then comes the picture: "he hath inclined his ear unto me." To incline the ear is to stoop, the way someone bends down close to catch a small sound instead of making you shout. Out of that one experience, the writer makes a decision about the rest of his life: "therefore will I call upon him as long as I live." One answered prayer becomes the ground for a lifetime of calling on God.

So you have nothing to work out tonight. Sit still for a few minutes, and let one time come back to you when God heard you. It is probably small, and probably years ago, and you may have explained it away since then. Do not turn it into a request or a plan. Just remember it, and thank Him for it. You are not calling into an empty field. The One who heard you then is still bending down to listen now.

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