Daily Manna · Day 359 · December 25
Goodness Laid Up for You
“Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!”
Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city. That is where this psalm is heading, and it is worth knowing before you read the middle of it that the man saying it is not out of trouble yet.
David is writing with people plotting his death; he says so in the same psalm, I have heard the slander of many, fear was on every side, while they took counsel together against me. It is also the psalm Jesus quotes from the cross. This is not written by a man whose prayers were being answered promptly.
And he does not claim the goodness has arrived. He says it is laid up, and the verb is the one used for hiding treasure, for storing something away deliberately where it cannot be got at yet. Then, in the same sentence, a second verb with a different tense entirely: which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men. Some of it is stored and some of it has already been done, publicly, in front of everybody. He is holding both at once and not pretending the stored part has been delivered.
Read who it is stored for. Them that fear thee, and them that trust in thee before the sons of men, meaning those who shelter in him where it is visible, at the point when running somewhere else would be quicker and would look more sensible.
So put down one thing you asked for and did not get, with today's date beside it, and one line underneath: stored, not refused. Keep the paper. The distinction between those two words is the whole of what this verse is claiming, and it will take you years to believe it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 359 is Born Into a War (Isaiah 9:6).