Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 44 · February 13
Who Am I
“Then went king David in, and sat before the LORD, and he said, Who am I, O Lord GOD? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?”
Lord GOD, we have brought you our best plan and treated the bringing as devotion. The building fund, the year out, the move. Then it was refused, and the wound went deeper than the plan deserved, because our love for you got mixed into it somewhere and cannot be separated out again.
David wanted to build you a house. I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains. Nathan told him to get on with it, and that same night you sent Nathan back to unsay it. Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in? Then you turned the word round on him: the LORD telleth thee that he will make thee an house. One noun, three things in that chapter. A palace, a temple, a family line. You refused his house and named yours.
What he did next we have never done. Then went king David in, and sat before the LORD. Sat. Nobody sits. What he said had nothing to do with the building. Who am I, O Lord GOD? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto? Hitherto is a word about distance covered. He was looking back down the road from the sheepcote, which you had just made a point of naming.
We do not sit. We carry the refusal off and work on it, and bring it back rewritten, and call that persistence. And what can David say more unto thee? for thou, Lord GOD, knowest thy servant. He did not finish the thought, and you did not make him.
You never explained to him why the house was going to somebody not yet born, and he sat there anyway. Ours is unexplained too. We would rather sit with it in front of you than carry it off and be right somewhere else.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 44 is The Years the Locust Ate (Joel 2:25).