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?
Psalm 49 calls both of you before it says anything else: "Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world: Both low and high, rich and poor, together." To the one watching, it says, "Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased." To the rich it says something colder, and it says it by quoting what the rich man thinks inside: "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 erases 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 makes you afraid cannot buy one more hour from the grave for the man who has it, and neither can yours. On that question, low and high stand in the same line. Then comes verse fifteen: "But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me." The thing no rich man could pay for is the thing God does Himself. The Hebrew word for "receive" is the one Genesis uses for Enoch: "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." The psalm gives no timetable and no explanation. It marks the line with Selah, a pause, and lets the promise stand.
Nothing with your name on it will outlive you, and the psalm says so plainly. So which will you rest on tonight, your name on the land or God's hand on your soul? The man who sang this psalm chose the second, and the promise he leaned on is yours as well: God will redeem your soul from the power of the grave, and He will receive you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 113 is Borrow Not a Few (2 Kings 4:3).