Thou Tellest

Many people read this verse as a fact about ancient customs. They say that mourners in Bible times caught their tears in small glass bottles and kept them on a shelf. Small bottles like that do exist, and some sit in museums today, but what they held, and when, is far less certain. Nothing in the psalm says that any Israelite owned one.

What the verse is really doing is counting. "Thou tellest my wanderings." In old English, to tell means to count, the way a bank teller counts money. It is the same word God uses with Abraham under the night sky: "tell the stars, if thou be able to number them." Psalm 147 says it plainly: "He telleth the number of the stars." Then the line ends with a record book: "are they not in thy book?" David's wanderings are counted, his tears are kept, and all of it is written down with God.

That leaves a real question, and it is worth asking honestly: what good is being counted? David is on the run when he writes this psalm, hunted by his enemies, and the psalm never says the running stopped. Being counted and being rescued are two different mercies, and this verse gives David the first without putting a date on the second. What it does give him is a certainty to stand on, and he says it in the very next verse: "When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me." David does not know when, but he knows who is on his side.

So pray it with him.

God, You have the number. You know every move we have made this year, every night we could not explain to anybody, and every tear we thought nobody saw. We would rather be rescued than counted, and You know that too. Until the rescue comes, let it be enough that nothing we have carried has been lost, that every tear is kept with You, and that You are for us. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 182 is Hidden in Trouble (Psalm 27:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two