Daily Manna · Day 338 · December 4
Pleasure in the Fearful
“The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.”
We are all trying to be worth keeping, and most of us are doing it with capacity. More responsibility, more output, a reading plan we are behind on, the version of ourselves that shows up where other believers can see it.
The people who first sang this were in no position to try that. Read the psalm and you can date it from the inside: the LORD doth build up Jerusalem, he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel, he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates. This is the community back from exile, rebuilding a wrecked city with hand tools, no army, no cavalry, no standing among the nations, a small population inside a wall they were putting up themselves. They had nothing impressive left to offer anybody.
And the verse immediately before is aimed straight at that. He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. The horse is military power, the thing they conspicuously did not have. The legs of a man is the runner, human capability at its fastest. God is said to take no pleasure in either. To a people with no horses that is not a rebuke. It is a relief.
Which leaves what the psalm does say. The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy. Both halves have to be there. Reverence with no hope curdles into dread, and a person like that is exhausting to live with. Hope with no reverence goes slack and stops taking him seriously. Held together they are a posture, and the psalm says he enjoys it.
So drop one thing this week on purpose, something you took on to be worth keeping. Then tell him plainly that you are counting on mercy and have nothing else in hand. That is not an admission of failure. It is the state he is described as taking pleasure in.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 338 is He Wist Not (Judges 16:20).