Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 124 · May 4
Whatsoever He Saith
“His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”
Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.
It is the last recorded thing Mary says. She appears once more, at the cross, and John gives her no further line. Her final sentence in Scripture is an instruction to catering staff.
John is old when he writes it down. The temple has been burned, the eyewitnesses are dying, and he has decades of material to choose from. For the opening sign he takes a wedding at Cana, a village no other Gospel mentions, where the crisis is that the drink has run out.
He also tells us who knew. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;). The bracket is his, and those servants are the only witnesses to the middle of the miracle.
Look at where Mary's sentence sits. She says it just after her son has answered her with mine hour is not yet come, and before there is anything to do. She commits them to an order not yet given, and when it comes it is manual labour: Fill the waterpots with water. Six stone jars, twenty gallons and more apiece, filled by hand, up to the brim. Nothing about carrying water looks like a miracle while you carry it.
He says why he kept it. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.
Find the plainest instruction you have been given and not carried out, the small kind, the kind that costs an afternoon and nobody sees. Do it today, before you have worked out what it will accomplish.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 124 is Where God Finds You (Judges 6:12).