A Ready Writer

You can talk for forty minutes about a bad referee, or a builder who never turned up, or the thing your brother said at Christmas. But when your small group asks what God has been to you this month, you come up with four sentences, and they are the same four sentences you came up with in June.

The psalm opens with a man who has the opposite problem: "My heart is inditing a good matter." Inditing is an old word that has dropped out of use. The Hebrew word behind it pictures a pot bubbling over, a stirring inside that has to go somewhere. What follows comes out of that fullness: "my tongue is the pen of a ready writer." A ready writer was a trained scribe with a fast hand. The point is not how skilled the hand is, because the hand is only trying to keep up with the heart.

Look at what this man is full of, because it is a person. "Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips." He has been gazing at a king. Jesus tells us how this works: "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." There is no road from an empty heart to a full mouth, and that is why the small group question keeps getting the same answer you gave in June.

Then the book of Hebrews takes verse six of this wedding song and says it to the Son of God: "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." The King this poem was overflowing about is still on His throne. He is still anointed "with the oil of gladness above thy fellows," and the grace poured into His lips has not run dry between that morning and this one. The fullness you are missing comes from further up the stream, from Him, and He has not stopped giving it. Go and spend time looking at the King, and your heart will have something to say.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 15 is Near to All (Psalm 145:18).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two