Daily Manna · Day 79 · March 20
Hidden Safely
“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.”
In 1521 a monk stood in front of an emperor and a diet at Worms and was told to recant. What is less often mentioned is what filled the months afterwards: a flood of pamphlets, woodcuts and printed attacks, some of them obscene, circulated across Europe faster than anything could answer them. Luther was hidden at the Wartburg for the better part of a year, under another name, while the tongues did their work outside.
Rehearsing the comeback in the shower is a sign. Three days on, one remark still has a room in your head and pays no rent for it.
David asks God to hide him, and he is precise about what he needs hiding from. Not danger in general: the pride of man, and the strife of tongues. He does not ask for the talking to stop, and reading back a few verses you can see that it did not. I have heard the slander of many, he says. What he is given instead is a location. The secret of thy presence, and then a pavilion, which is a tent word, a covered place where you are out of the weather but can still hear it. Inside it, their verdict is simply not the one that decides who he is.
Draft the reply if you have to. Then delete it before it sends. Take the twenty minutes you were going to spend defending yourself and spend them telling God exactly what those words did to you, in the words you would use to describe an injury. Let His verdict be the last one you hear tonight.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 79 is The Crowns (Revelation 4:11).