Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 113 · April 23
He Shall Receive Me
“But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. Selah.”
Which one are you today: the person watching somebody else get rich, or the person being watched?
The psalm calls both of you in by name before it says anything. Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world: both low and high, rich and poor, together. To the first it says, Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased. To the second it says something colder, and it says it as a quotation of the man's own thinking: Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names.
What flattens the difference between the two of you is a price. None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him. The money that frightens you cannot buy one hour back from the grave for the man who has it, and neither can yours. On that question, low and high stand in the same queue. Then, out of nowhere, verse fifteen. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. The verb no rich man could perform is the one God does. And receive, at the end, is the word used of Enoch: Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. The psalm gives no timetable, no mechanism and no further explanation, and then prints Selah and stops.
If nothing with your name on it outlives you, and the psalm says plainly that nothing will, is that one sentence enough to sleep on tonight?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 113 is Borrow Not a Few (2 Kings 4:3).