Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 177 · June 26
Until I Have Shewed
“Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.”
Perhaps your name is on fewer lists than it was a few years ago.
Psalm 71 is written from further along that road, and it is not a peaceful place: "Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth." There are people around him who have already written him off: "God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him."
Read what he asks for, because it is narrower than you would expect. He leaves out the things you might expect him to want: his strength back, his enemies gone, his years returned. He asks for time and an audience: "until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come." There are two audiences there, and he will never meet the second one.
Notice what is missing, too. We are not told that the generation listened, or that he was spared trouble. Verse 20 says plainly that he was not spared: "Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again." To quicken is to bring back to life. And the psalm ends with him singing, his tongue talking of God's righteousness "all the day long."
So here is a man whom others think is past being useful, asking God for leave to keep talking. He has been doing it since he was young: "O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works."
The warning here has nothing to do with dying. It is this: nobody is going to ask you. There will be no moment when the younger ones turn round and ask for the story of God's strength you have carried since your youth. This psalm is a man who noticed the room moving on and opened his mouth anyway. If you wait to be asked, you will simply go quiet. So tell it, to a grandchild, a neighbour, or the young person in the next pew. The God who taught you from your youth has not cast you off now, and He will give you the words.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 177 is To Live Is Christ (Philippians 1:21).