Through Not Around

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.

Say that to Jacob, since it is addressed to him by name in the verse before. Not the patriarch himself but the nation carrying his name, and the name is chosen deliberately, because Jacob is the man who spent a night wrestling at a river crossing and came away limping. That is who is being told about passing through waters. God calls the nation by the name of an ancestor who cheated his brother, ran, worked fourteen years for the wrong wife, was deceived by his own sons for two decades, and buried the woman he loved on a roadside. If anyone had grounds to expect the route around, it was Jacob, and he never once got it.

And look at the preposition, because the whole promise turns on it. Through the waters. Through the rivers. Through the fire. Not over, not around, not instead of. God does not offer an exit here. He offers company, and He sets a limit on what the water and the fire may do: they shall not overflow thee, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. That is a real promise. It is not the promise that you stay dry.

Everyone told you the season would pass. Nobody mentioned you would have to walk the length of it.

So may you be given company rather than an exit, since that is what is on offer and it is the better half. May the water come up and stop. May you come out the far side of this smelling of the river and not of the fire, and may you walk out limping, like Jacob, and named, like Jacob, and know exactly who you were with in there.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 75 is Which of Them (Luke 7:47).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna