Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 221 · August 9
Out of the Dust
“He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;”
"He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill." Hannah prayed those words at Shiloh. She had just handed her only son, Samuel, to Eli the priest to serve the LORD there, and she went home to Ramah without him.
Psalm 113 sings almost the same words back to her, with nobody's name attached: "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill." One voice is a woman telling her own story. The other is a congregation's song, sung by people who may never have been anywhere near a dunghill. Notice where the psalm chooses to finish. It climbs very high first: "The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens." Then it comes down to land here: "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children." That is Hannah's story exactly, placed last, as the example the whole psalm ends on. Centuries later, a young woman in Nazareth takes up the same song: "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree."
Psalms 113 to 118 became the songs Jewish families sang at Passover. So this was ordinary singing, learned by children and sung by people carrying every kind of trouble at once. Think of what that means. This line was being sung long before you were born. Someone in your church has been where verse seven begins, down in the dust, and can still sing it without stopping. And the God it praises is so high that He "humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!" When He bends down to look, it is the dust He looks at, and the people lying in it.
So may the God who lifted Hannah lift you too. May He find you wherever you are lying low, raise you up, and set you "with princes, even with the princes of his people." And one day, may your own story become a song in someone else's mouth, long after you have stopped needing it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 221 is The LORD on My Side (Psalm 118:6).