Met Together

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Four of them, named like people, arriving at one place. A kiss is the greeting between two who had every reason to pass without speaking.

The psalm spends nine verses explaining why they might not have met. It is a nation asking for anger to stop. Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. Truth about them and mercy toward them were pulling opposite ways, and everyone singing it knew which of the two they had coming.

The next line keeps the picture and adds the direction of travel. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. One comes up out of the ground where the people are; one comes down from where God is. The meeting happens in the space between, which is not a neutral space: justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. They walk in front of him. Then a man arrives in Galilee and John reaches for the same pair to describe him, full of grace and truth, and the meeting has an address and a face.

The two things you have spent years asking God to choose between, he has never had to choose between. Paul puts the difficulty in one clause and answers it there: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Mercy did not arrive by truth stepping aside. They met at a cross.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 249 is Carried Like a Son (Deuteronomy 1:31).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two