Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 120 · April 30
Crowning the Year
“Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.”
The barley is in. The trailer has been up the lane four times, the field behind the gate is stubble and gulls, and the man leaning on the gate is doing arithmetic about the price and the diesel and next year.
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness. That is farming before it is anything else. Around it: Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers. Ridges and furrows are the shape of a ploughed field, and the crown goes on at the end of the year, where the harvest is.
Read from verse one and the psalm gets heavier under you. It opens at the altar. Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. Then, before any rain arrives, a warning about what answered prayer can be like: By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation. The hand softening the ground in verse ten is the hand in verse five.
It never goes back to the man at the gate. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 120 is Anchor of the Soul (Hebrews 6:19-20).