Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 11 · January 11
Able to Help
“For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.”
We each keep a short list of things we have never brought to God, and the list is short for a reason: we drew it up ourselves, out of the two or three items we decided in advance he would not want to hear about.
Hebrews will not let the list stand. He himself hath suffered being tempted. The paragraph in front of that sentence is insistently physical: the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; he took on him the seed of Abraham, wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren. Succour is built from two pieces, a cry and a run, meaning to hear a shout and go toward it. There is also the objection we hold in reserve, that he never gave in and therefore cannot know. Giving in is what ends the pressure. Whoever yields at ten minutes never finds out what the fortieth weighs, and he was forty days in a wilderness, and in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Lord Jesus, you know what is on the list. We have kept those items back because we decided you would be embarrassed by them, or bored of them, or finished with us, and we made that decision without asking you. We are asking now. You have been hungry. You have been lied about. Your friends went to sleep on the worst night you ever had, and you did not hold it against them in the morning.
You were not spared the pressure. Reach us inside it, at the fortieth minute and not only at the tenth, by somebody who has been that far in and did not turn back. Hear the shout. Come toward it. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 11 is Expected End (Jeremiah 29:11).