Continual Guide

In Isaiah 58 the people are keeping their fasts. They come to God every day and say they want to be near Him: "they take delight in approaching to God." Yet God tells them through Isaiah that their fasting does not please Him. "Behold, ye fast for strife and debate," He says, while the hungry around them stay hungry. The chapter is a rebuke.

Out of that rebuke comes today's promise, and the word to sit with is "continually." The Hebrew word is tamid, and it is a special word in Israel's worship. The lamp in the sanctuary was to "burn always," and that is tamid. The bread on the holy table was "the continual bread." The morning and evening offering was the continual burnt offering, the one that never stopped. Tamid means the thing that is always there, the thing that does not come and go like an event. So when God says He "shall guide thee continually," He is promising something more like that lamp than the six months of clear signs you may have been asking for while you heard only silence. His guidance is steady and plain, and it stays lit whether anyone is looking at it or not.

Notice where the promise sits in the chapter. The verse just before it says, "And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity." Everything in verse 11, the watered garden, the bones made fat, the "spring of water, whose waters fail not," is promised to someone who pours himself out to meet another person's need.

So God has not stopped guiding you. In this chapter His guidance flows downhill from mercy, the way water runs down to the low places. A person who stands still, waiting for directions before doing anything for anyone, has climbed up out of the stream. Go and meet someone's need today, and you will find the Lord's steady light right there with you, along with His spring that does not run dry.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 40 is No Overseer (Proverbs 6:6).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna