Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 252 · September 9
All Things Well
“And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”
Tyre, then Sidon, then down through the Decapolis to the sea of Galilee. Mark gives the itinerary and it is a long loop through Gentile country, in the wrong direction for anybody in a hurry. That road is how he reaches this man.
They bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. He arrives in other people's hands and the first thing Jesus does is take him out of them: he took him aside from the multitude. Then fingers into the ears, spittle, a touch on the tongue. A man who cannot hear a word of explanation is told what is about to happen in the only language he has. Then a sigh, and one word Mark keeps in the language it was spoken in: Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
What the crowd says is bigger than they knew. He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. Isaiah had put those two into a list of what happens when God comes back. The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, a few words before the tongue of the dumb sing. And done all things well is the verdict on the first page of the Bible, where God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. A crowd in a foreign district reached for creation language without knowing what they had picked up.
He walked the long way round to reach one man in a district that was not his, then told them to keep it quiet, and they published it anyway. The route was never inefficient. The man at the end of it was the reason for every mile.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 252 is Sins Remembered No More (Hebrews 8:12).