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.”
There is a number in your phone you have stopped ringing, and the not-ringing has hardened into something you no longer explain to anybody.
David does not soften the possibility. He names the two people under the greatest obligation to stay, and he says what happens if they go. Then look at the verb on the other side of the comma, because it is more specific than take me up suggests in English. The Hebrew is the word for gathering: gathering a harvest in before the weather turns, gathering an animal that has wandered, and in Judges it is the word for what nobody would do for a traveller in the square, when the text says there was no man that took them into his house. It is the verb for bringing in something that has been left outside.
That is a different claim from being consoled. He is not saying God will make up the difference emotionally. He is saying that what your family put down, God picks up, and takes indoors.
And notice the psalm never promises they come back. It promises you will not be left lying where they left you.
So stop waiting for an apology before you allow yourself to be gathered. And if you know someone who has been quietly orphaned by people who are still alive, put them at your table this month. You know what it costs to be picked up off the ground, which makes you the right person to do it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 341 is The Fourth Alleluia (Revelation 19:6).