Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 258 · September 15
As It Hath Pleased Him
“But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.”
Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body. Paul writes it as a line of speech, and somebody says it in a church most weeks in different words. I am no use here. Nobody would notice.
His answer does not flatter the speaker or argue about usefulness. But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. Set is a placing word, the same kind of act as putting a stone where you want it. The reason attached is God's pleasure, which puts the question out of reach of the member's opinion of itself.
He says it three ways across three letters. To Rome: we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. To Ephesus, with the joints doing the work: the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part. And four verses on in this same chapter, aimed straight at the foot: those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary. Under all of it is what God said to Moses when he pleaded that he was a poor speaker. Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?
Come and find out which joint you are. If you have been standing at the edge of a congregation on the grounds that you are not the hand, the place was assigned by somebody whose pleasure in the arrangement is not in doubt. The body has been working short of a part it was given.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 258 is Singing of Mercies Forever (Psalm 89:1).