Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 293 · October 20
Alone on the Roof
“I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.”
Jerusalem, some years after the walls came down, and a man awake on a flat roof at night. A roof in that country was a room. You slept up there in the heat, ate up there, called across to the next house. He is on it by himself, and what he reaches for is a bird. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.
Two other birds arrive in the same breath and both live out of town: I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. The sparrow is the one that lives where the people are. That is the exactness of it, and anybody who has been lonely in a full building recognises the address. The roof, with the street awake underneath and lamps on next door. The rest of the psalm is a body in trouble: bones burned as an hearth, food forgotten, ashes eaten like bread, a drink mingled with weeping.
The roof turns into a desk in the second half. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD. The man alone up there is writing so that people not yet born will have the words when their turn comes, which is exactly how you got them. Do the small version of that this week. Put one true sentence about tonight somewhere durable: the end of a letter, the margin of the Bible you will leave behind, a message to the friend who thinks you are fine.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 293 is Angels Encamped Around You (Psalm 34:7).