Daily Manna · Day 6 · January 6
The Banquet
“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.”
A woman lays a table for a man who has already told her he cannot stay long. She does it properly anyway, the good plates, the chair pulled out. Halfway through, he checks the time. She keeps eating, and something in her quietly sits down for good.
The line in the Song is the opposite of that meal. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Brought is deliberate; the house is his; the seat has her name on it. The banner is the detail readers skate past. Israel camped by standards, every man by his own standard, with the ensign of his father's house (Numbers 2:2), so that anyone walking through that camp could tell at a glance whose each tent was. What flies over this table is not achievement and not usefulness. It is love, raised by the Host, over her head, where she cannot reach it to take it down.
May you eat one meal this week without watching the clock. May the flag over your head be one you did not have to earn, and may you look up long enough to read it. May the Host stay for the whole meal.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 6 is Treasures Opened (Matthew 2:11).