Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 233 · August 21
If Thou Shouldest Mark
“If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”
We keep our own accounts, and we keep them kindly. Things get written off. The bad week goes under tiredness, the sentence at the table goes under provocation, and the running total stays manageable because we are the ones holding the pen.
If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? Mark is a bookkeeping word, to watch a thing, note it, keep it on file. The question is left open and no name is put forward to answer it. What comes next is stranger than relief: But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. Forgiveness, and then fear, in that order, with no account given of the join. Four verses in, and the psalm is still exactly where it started, out of the depths.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 233 is Good Tidings to the Meek (Isaiah 61:1-2).