Our Guide Unto Death

Have you ever asked the older person in your life whether they are afraid?

Watching a parent grow old teaches you things. You notice the slower steps on the stairs, the pill box on the counter, and then the call from the hospital that you had been expecting for a year. Somewhere in the middle of it, you work out how many years you have left yourself, and the number feels different than it used to.

Up to this point, the psalm has been about the city of Zion: "Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following." Count the defences, it says, so you can tell your children. That is a solid and sensible thing to do with a city. Then the psalm refuses to stop at the wall: "For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death."

The last words of that verse are hard to translate from the Hebrew, and translators have gone different ways with them. Some read "unto death," and others read "for evermore." What nobody disputes is where the sentence is going. The psalm will not end on stone walls. It follows the reader past everything that can be counted, onto the one stretch of road that nobody can practise for and no human companion can walk with you. On that road, this God is the guide.

So ask the question. Then stay in your chair and say nothing while they answer. Do not try to fix it, do not put a verse on it, and do not move the conversation somewhere more comfortable for you. Fear that is spoken to someone who stays is no longer carried alone, and your quiet presence is most of what makes that possible. And when your own turn comes, the same God will be your guide, as He has promised, "for ever and ever."

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 364 is Prove Your Own Selves (2 Corinthians 13:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna