Daily Manna · Day 74 · March 15
Generational Faithfulness
“Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.”
"She wrote in the margins," he said. "I can't make out half of it now."
Think of the ground under the house. Nobody thanks it. Nobody checks it. It is the one thing in the building nobody has an opinion about, and every opinion anyone holds about the building assumes it.
That is exactly the argument this psalmist makes, and he makes it in two moves. Verse 89: for ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven. Verse 90: thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. He is pointing at the ground. The earth stands because God set it standing, and it is still standing, and that is his evidence for the reliability of everything else God has said. Then verse 91 finishes the thought and is stranger than either: they continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants. The ground is not neutral. It is under orders.
Which quietly answers the question people your age actually ask about a grandmother's Bible. The worry is that her God was a God for that generation, in that house, with that handwriting, and the further you get from it the less of Him there is. The psalm says faithfulness is unto all generations, plural and continuing, and it grounds that claim in something you can go outside and stand on.
So: the ground under the house. You cannot read half of her handwriting, and it does not matter nearly as much as you think, because you are standing on the thing she was standing on. It did not belong to her either.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 74 is All Ye That Pass By (Lamentations 1:12).