Daily Manna · Day 52 · February 21
Known and Trusted
“And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.”
Moses is on Mount Sinai, holding two blank stone tablets. At the foot of the mountain is a nation that has just made a golden calf. Moses has asked to see God's glory, and what he receives is a name, called out as the LORD passes by: "The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty."
That is one of the fullest descriptions God gives of Himself in the Old Testament, and the rest of the Bible keeps building on His name. Proverbs turns the name into a building: "The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe." Joel promises that "whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered," and Peter quotes that line at Pentecost as "shall be saved." Then the New Testament puts a Person in that place. The angel tells Joseph to call the child Jesus, "for he shall save his people from their sins." That is what the name Jesus means.
That is why the order in today's verse is worth noticing: "they that know thy name will put their trust in thee." Knowing comes first, and trust follows it. The psalm is not asking you to work up confidence; it is telling you where confidence comes from.
Look, too, at where the line sits. Psalm 9 reads like a courtroom. David praises God for sitting "in the throne judging right." Later in the psalm, "The wicked shall be turned into hell," and "the needy shall not alway be forgotten." This promise comes from a man watching God settle the accounts.
So there is no technique here. Trust grows out of knowing. You may feel you have been failing at trust, when really you have been trying to lean your weight on a character you never studied, and nobody can do that. Start where God Himself started with Moses, in Exodus 34, and learn His name. The verse ends with the promise that makes trusting Him safe: "thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 52 is Job's Wife (Job 2:10).