Daily Manna · Day 341 · December 7
Taken Up When Forsaken
“When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.”
Psalm 27 speaks to a fear many people carry quietly: that the people who should stand by you will walk away. Maybe there is a number in your phone you have stopped calling, and you no longer explain why to anybody.
David does not soften this. He names the two people with the biggest duty to stay, his father and his mother, and he says what happens if they go: "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up." Look closely at the words "take me up." The Hebrew word behind them means to gather. It is used for gathering in a harvest, and for taking in an animal that has wandered off and bringing it home. In Judges it describes what nobody in one town would do for a traveller sitting in the street: "there was no man that took them into his house to lodging." It is the word for bringing in something that has been left outside.
So David is promising more than comfort. He is saying that when your family puts you down, God picks you up and brings you indoors.
Notice also that the psalm never promises they will come back. What it promises is that you will not be left lying where they left you.
So you do not have to wait for an apology before you let God gather you in. And if you know someone who has been quietly cut off by family who are still alive, invite them to your table this month. You know what it means to be picked up off the ground, and that makes you the right person to do it for someone else.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 341 is The Fourth Alleluia (Revelation 19:6).