Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 27 · January 27
No Greater Joy
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”
We keep a quiet ledger of what we have to show for ourselves, and the entries that felt substantial at the time do not read well later. The promotion. The house. The thing we were right about in 2019.
An old man near the end of the first century writes a short note to a friend and puts his own ledger in one line. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. No greater. He had seen the Lord raised, and this is what he says sits at the top.
The children are not his family. Paul uses the same relation with Corinth: though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers. These are people somebody carried in and kept an eye on afterwards.
Look at how thin the evidence is. He heard. The brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee. His greatest joy in life is a second-hand report of somebody else's ordinary conduct in a town he is not in.
Walk is the right verb for it. It describes what you did today and will do tomorrow, at the same speed, on a road.
May somebody hear a report about you this year and be glad in a way you never find out about. May the people you carried in still be walking when you are too old to check. And may the ledger you keep be quietly replaced by his.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 27 is Simple Faith (Psalm 116:6).