Blotted Out

A man cuts down a tree. He burns half of it to warm himself and roast his meat, and he says, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire. Out of the other half he carves a figure, and falls down to it, and prays to it, and says, Deliver me; for thou art my god. Isaiah reports this without raising his voice. He does not need to.

That is who verse 22 is spoken to. Not to the devout on a bad week. To people who had halved a log.

Distance from God almost never arrives as a decision. It arrives around the move, or the diagnosis, or the argument nobody has mentioned since, and the not praying gets comfortable faster than anyone expects. Then a year has gone. Then three. There is no dramatic apostasy to point at, which is part of what makes it so hard to speak about; it is not a fall, it is a drift, and drift has no anniversary.

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins. Blotted is a wiping word, used of erasing writing from a scroll. Notice the tense: it is finished before the invitation is issued. And notice the order, which is backwards from every instinct you have. Return unto me, He says, and then gives the reason: for I have redeemed thee. Not return so that I may. Return because I already have.

That promise carries no condition about your explaining the gap. The cloud is gone. The sky over you is not being negotiated. The only thing left in the verse is a door, and it is on your side of the wall.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 36 is Create in Me (Psalm 51:10).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna