Daily Manna · Day 334 · November 30
Not One Word Failed
“Blessed be the LORD, that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant.”
There hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant.
Solomon says it at the dedication of the temple, and he is not making it up on the spot; he is quoting. Joshua had written almost the same sentence a few centuries earlier: there failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken. Between those two men lie the wilderness, the conquest, the judges, the whole shambolic period the book of Judges records without flattering anybody. Not one word failed is a claim made about God's side of the account, and it is worth saying that the book Solomon is standing in goes on to record his own kingdom splitting within a generation and this temple burning. Nothing here promises that our side holds.
Which is why the hymn most people reach for on this subject is such an odd one. Thomas Chisholm wrote Great Is Thy Faithfulness at fifty-seven, and when he was asked about it he said there was no dramatic story behind it, only the simple recording of the goodness of a faithful God through an unremarkable life of poor health and small salaries. He had nothing spectacular to report. That was the report.
That is the honest shape of this, and it matters more than a better testimony would. God said he would bring them out, and give them the land, and give them rest. Every one of those arrived. Some took centuries. Not one of them arrived early.
Slow is not the same word as failed. That distinction is the only thing standing between a patient believer and a disappointed one, and it costs nothing to say and years to learn.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 334 is How Then Can I (Genesis 39:9).