Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 260 · September 17
I Cannot Come Down
“And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?”
The wall was up and the doors were not yet hung when the first letter came. Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. A neutral venue, a reasonable request. Nehemiah puts the real reason in the same sentence: but they thought to do me mischief.
I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? They sent it three more times and got the same answer every time. The fifth came as an open letter, unsealed so anybody could read the charge of treason in it. Then a hired man inside the temple told him to hide overnight because assassins were coming. Should such a man as I flee? The wall was finished in fifty and two days.
Two readers need opposite things here. One of you is being pulled off a work by requests that are all reasonable on their face, and has been apologising for saying no. The sentence is yours. The other has it framed and quotes it to avoid people, and chapter five is written for you. When a great cry came up from his own people about mortgaged fields and children sold into service, Nehemiah did not plead the schedule. I was very angry when I heard their cry. He stopped, called a great assembly, faced down the nobles and made them hand the land back. The wall waited.
Two letters came to that wall. One was written to get him down off it, and one was a cry from people standing at the bottom of it, and he answered both, and he answered them differently. Which of the two is in your hand this week, and how sure are you?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 260 is Angels Charged Over You (Psalm 91:11).