Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 111 · April 21
Ashamed to Lift My Face
“And said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.”
We are all fluent in confessing other people's sins, and we do it in the plural to make it sound humble.
Ezra had just arrived in Jerusalem from Babylon when the princes came with the report. The trespass was not his; he had not been in the country when it happened. And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied. He sat there until the evening sacrifice before saying a word, then knelt with his hands spread out. O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.
Our. Read the whole prayer and he never once steps out of the plural. Isaiah does it standing in front of the throne, where he had every excuse to be counted separately, and the clause he will not drop is and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Nehemiah gets specific about it: both I and my father's house have sinned. None of the three found a pronoun that let them stand outside the people they were praying for.
We have found one. Same word, opposite work: our church, our generation, the state we are all in, said where everybody knows the speaker is reporting, not included. Ezra's plural cost him his beard. Ours costs nothing.
Ezra names what he is hoping in while he is still on his knees. And now for a little space grace hath been shewed from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape. Thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve. That is older than his prayer and steadier than his shame: He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 111 is Rich in Faith (James 2:5).