All My Desire

Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. Jesus said it, and it makes a fair objection to most of what happens when we pray. Put the objection at full strength: a person reciting their sorrows to God is describing a house fire to the one who watched it start.

Psalm 38 treats that objection as settled fact and goes on anyway. Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. David is not disputing the point, he is standing on it, in a psalm that reads mostly as a medical report. There is no soundness in my flesh. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. He knows every bit of it is visible already, and he keeps talking for thirteen more verses.

One detail settles what the talking is for. To everybody else in the psalm he says nothing at all. But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. His friends stand aloof from his sore, his enemies imagine deceits all the day long, and he answers none of them. Every word he has goes in one direction, and the word for what reaches God is groaning, which carries no information whatever.

Go back to the sentence Jesus said and look at what he was arguing against. Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. The knowing was given as a reason to stop working on God by volume, and the next thing out of his mouth is a prayer he wants them saying aloud. Say it anyway, at whatever length it takes, to the one person who does not need to be told.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 145 is Hunger Satisfied (Matthew 5:6).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two