Daily Manna · Day 6 · January 6
The Banquet
“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.”
A woman sets a table for a man who has already told her he cannot stay long. She sets it properly anyway, with the good plates and his chair pulled out. Halfway through the meal he checks the time. She keeps eating, but something inside her quietly gives up 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 a careful word. It means the house is His, and the seat was set for her. The banner is the detail readers hurry past. When Israel camped in the wilderness, each tribe camped under its own flag. God told them, "Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of their father's house" (Numbers 2:2). That way anyone walking through the camp could tell at a glance whose tent was whose. The flag flying over this table is not marked success or usefulness. It says love. The Host Himself raised it over her head, where she cannot reach 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. And may you know that your Host stays 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).