Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 224 · August 12
I Believe God
“Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me.”
A fortnight of sky with nothing in it. No sun by day, no stars at night, and a ship going wherever a wind they called Euroclydon decided to take it.
By then the cargo was over the side and the gear had followed, cast out with our own hands. Luke writes himself into the next sentence, the bleakest line in the chapter. All hope that we should be saved was then taken away. Paul stands up in the middle of them and opens by saying he told them so, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete. It is a strange way to begin and it is why the rest carried: he had been right the first time and every man on deck knew it.
What follows is reported speech. There stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul. Then the clause Paul holds on to: lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Then his own line on top of it: I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. He is believing a particular sentence, said to him, on a night he can date, and he repeats its terms exactly, including the clause nobody wanted: there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship.
Every term held, to the letter and no wider. The sailors tried to slip away in the boat and had to be stopped, except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. The soldiers proposed killing every prisoner aboard rather than risk one swimming off. Two hundred and seventy-six people got ashore on planks and broken pieces of a ship that was gone. Four words in the middle of all that, said on a wet deck to men who had stopped eating: I believe God.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 224 is The Holy Spirit Given (Luke 11:13).