Daily Manna · Day 55 · February 24
Comforted Thoughts
“In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.”
"Just try not to think about it." She meant it kindly. It has never once worked.
The man who wrote Psalm 94 was not lying awake over a personal worry. Read the chapter. He is watching people slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless, and get away with it, and say the LORD shall not see. That is his multitude of thoughts. It is a public injustice running loose, and his complaint is the oldest one there is: LORD, how long shall the wicked triumph?
Which changes what verse 19 is doing. It is not a promise of a quiet mind. Two verses earlier: unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence. Then, in the line right after that, he says his foot was going out from under him and mercy was what held him up. The man is mid-slip. The thoughts have not stopped multiplying, the injustice has not been corrected, nothing in his circumstances has been cleared away, and into that comes thy comforts delight my soul. The comfort arrives in the noise. It does not wait for the room to go quiet.
Say the loudest thought in one sentence, the way you would say it to a friend rather than the way you would pray it. Then read the rest of Psalm 94 from verse 16 to the end, slowly, and notice that the man never gets his answer inside the chapter either. Stop treating a quiet mind as the price of admission. God has never once required it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 55 is Kiss the Son (Psalm 2:12).