Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 358 · December 24
Keep the Door
“Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.”
Each of us knows a sentence we wish we had never said, and we know how little warning we had before it came out. There was half a second, and then the whole room was different.
This prayer borrows a picture from a building. A watch is a guard posted at a gate, and a door has a keeper who decides what goes through it. Both pictures put the control outside the man who is praying. He wants Somebody else standing in the doorway of his mouth. Look also at the verses around his request, because the psalm knows that the mouth only carries what comes from deeper inside. The verse before asks that his prayer rise like incense and that "the lifting up of my hands" be "as the evening sacrifice." The verse after names where words begin: "Incline not my heart to any evil thing." Then, most surprisingly, he asks to be corrected by other people, and he calls it a gift: "Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil." A man who asks for a guard on his own mouth is also asking for someone to be free to tell him the truth about it.
Another psalm shows the same man trying to do it on his own: "I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me." That lasted only as long as his patience did. Two verses later he admits, "My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue."
So, Lord, set a watch before our mouths tomorrow, because half a second has never been long enough for us. Turn our hearts toward what is good first, since the mouth only carries out what the heart has already decided. When correction comes from someone with the right to give it, help us take it as the oil this psalm calls it. Keep the door of our lips. We cannot keep it ourselves, and we have stopped pretending we can. Thank You that You are willing to stand guard where we cannot. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 358 is Now Is the Accepted Time (2 Corinthians 6:2).