Call and Answer

A soldier is sitting on a step with his back against a wall, and the shelling has stopped for the moment, and he is not thinking about victory. He is thinking about whether anyone knows where he is.

Trace the promise through Scripture and you will find that this is the shape it keeps taking. Not extraction. Company. Isaiah has God undertaking to be there while his people go through the waters, and promising that the rivers will not close over them. Not around the waters. Through. In the furnace, the fourth man is in the fire, walking with the other three, and Nebuchadnezzar's own report is that they were loose and unhurt in there. Jesus ends Matthew with lo, I am with you alway. And the name given before any of it happened was Emmanuel, God with us. It is the same promise every time.

So read what God actually undertakes here. I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. Four verbs, and the second one concedes the point. Trouble is coming, and you will be inside it when help arrives. And the verse before tells you who this is spoken over: he hath set his love upon me, he hath known my name. This is not a charm to carry in a pocket. It is a covenant with somebody you know.

Say it plainly, as plainly as you would to a person. Lord, here is the thing, in the words I actually use for it. Here is the fear underneath the thing, which is not the same as the thing. I am not going to ask first for the rescue. I am asking you to come in here. You promised an answer, and you promised company while I wait for one, and today I will take the company. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 42 is A Man of Unclean Lips (Isaiah 6:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna