Daily Manna · Day 39 · February 8
Guided Eye
“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.”
What do you actually want when you ask God for guidance?
Two decent options and a deadline on Thursday. You have asked six people, which has produced six opinions, a longer list of considerations and no peace whatsoever.
The verse promises three things and people usually notice only the third. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, I will guide thee with mine eye. Instruction and teaching come first, and they are slow, general, unglamorous words. Guidance by eye is what they build to, and the next verse tells you why it can fail: be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle. A look only steers an animal that is watching the face. Turn away and you still get steered, with hardware instead of a glance, and it is the same destination arrived at painfully. And do not skip how the psalm opens. A man kept silence about his sin and his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long, and the guidance verse comes after that got dealt with, not before. Clear eyes follow honest ones.
There is a thing between you and Him that came to mind while you read that last sentence.
You are not being told to fix it today. You are being invited to come and stand close enough to catch a look, and to bring Thursday with you when you do. The offer is open, and it is His face, not His instructions, that you would be coming for.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 39 is Peace, Be Still (Mark 4:39).