As It Hath Pleased Him

"Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body." Paul puts those words in the mouth of a foot, and you can hear the same thing said in a church most weeks, in other words. Somebody decides they are no use there, and that nobody would notice if they stayed home.

Paul's answer does not flatter that person, and it does not argue about how useful they are. "But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him." Set is a placing word. It describes the care a builder takes when he puts a stone exactly where he wants it. The reason Paul gives is that it pleased God. So the question of whether you belong was settled by God when He placed you, whatever you think of yourself.

Paul makes the same point in three of his letters. To the church in Rome he writes that "we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." To the Ephesians he describes the joints doing their 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 after today's verse, in this same chapter, he speaks up for the parts that look weakest: "those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary." Underneath it all is what God said to Moses, when Moses 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?"

So come and find out which joint you are. Perhaps you have stood at the edge of a church for a long time because you are not the hand. Your place was given to you by the God who is pleased with how He arranged His body, and He made no mistake when He put you in it. The body has been missing something while you held back, and your place is still there for you to take.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 258 is Singing of Mercies Forever (Psalm 89:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two