Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 193 · July 12
Seek His Face
“Seek the LORD, and his strength: seek his face evermore.”
Most of your seeking God has happened in emergencies. There is no shame in that, because the emergencies were real. Still, the pattern is worth admitting. We seek Him hard for a couple of weeks after something frightens us. Then, as things get better, the seeking fades at the same pace, and we call the fading peace.
"Seek the LORD, and his strength: seek his face evermore." This line sits inside a psalm that does nothing but remember. Psalm 105 recounts Abraham, Joseph in irons, the plagues and the way out of Egypt, the whole record of what God has already done. The call to keep seeking is set at the very start of all that remembering. The same words appear in the psalm David gave on the day the ark was brought into Jerusalem, and there the King James words the end differently: "seek his face continually." The Hebrew word is the same in both places, and it speaks against seeking God only now and then. Another psalm gives the shortest answer to that call: "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek."
Lord, we have sought Your hand more often than Your face, and our seeking has usually had a deadline on it. We do not ask to be made to feel guilty; we ask to be changed. Make our seeking continual. Teach us to look for You on the ordinary days, the ones with nothing wrong in them, when nothing is at stake except knowing You. Thank You that You never stopped seeking us, and that You are found by those who seek You. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 193 is Law Written on Hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).