Daily Manna · Day 74 · March 15
Generational Faithfulness
“Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.”
A young man holds his grandmother's old Bible and turns the pages slowly. "She wrote in the margins," he says. "I can't make out half of it now." Quietly he wonders whether her God can be his God too.
Think about the ground under a house. Nobody thanks it or checks on it, and nobody has an opinion about it. Yet every opinion anyone has about the house takes that ground for granted.
That is the argument this psalm makes, in two steps. Verse 89 says, "For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven." Verse 90 says, "Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth." The psalmist is pointing at the ground. The earth stands because God set it there, and it is still standing. That is his proof that everything else God has said can be trusted. Then verse 91 finishes the thought with something even more surprising: "They continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants." The ground is not just sitting there. It is under God's orders.
That quietly answers a question many people ask when they hold a grandmother's Bible. The worry is that her God belonged to her generation, her house and her handwriting, and that the further you get from her, the less of Him there is. The psalm says His faithfulness is "unto all generations," every one of them, and it keeps going. It rests that claim on something you can walk outside and stand on.
So think again about the ground under the house. You may not be able to read half of her handwriting, and that matters much less than you fear, because you are standing on the same ground she stood on. It never belonged to her either. It belongs to the faithful God who set it there, and He is as faithful to you as He was to her.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 74 is All Ye That Pass By (Lamentations 1:12).