Draw Nigh

Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you reads like terms. You move first, his response is scaled to your move, and in a week when you have nothing to move with, the sentence sits there like a locked door.

Read the rest of the verse, which almost never gets quoted with it. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Then: be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Nothing there is describing a warmer devotional life.

Look at what the chapter is arguing about and the demand makes sense. It opens on people fighting: from whence come wars and fightings among you? They pray and it fails. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Double minded is his own diagnosis, the word he used in chapter one for a man going two directions at once, and here he names the second allegiance: the friendship of the world is enmity with God. Standing over all of it, easy to walk past, is the clause that pays for it. But he giveth more grace.

The terms are real, and heavier and simpler than the objection assumed. What is asked for is one allegiance where there have been two, and James says how that feels on the way through: mourning, and a laughter that gets turned. Then the part to bank on. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. So put the question back where you started. When you have asked God to come nearer, what were you asking for, and would you still want it if it arrived as the end of the other thing?

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 264 is Waiting Renews Strength (Isaiah 40:31).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two