Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 62 · March 3
What Is Man
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
Psalm 8 asks a question that it never answers.
"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" David asks it under the night sky, which he has just called "the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained." He says fingers, as if the whole sky were small work for God's hand. Then he asks why that same hand bothers with something even smaller.
What follows is a description of what God did: "For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." The psalm tells you the place God gave us, but it gives no reason why we were worth it. It ends by repeating its own first line, and the question is left standing in the middle.
The same question comes up in two other places, in two very different tones, and the Bible keeps both of them.
Psalm 144 asks it quietly, just before saying that our days "are as a shadow that passeth away": "LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him!" Job asks it while he is suffering, and for him God's attention feels like the pain itself: "What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?" The words are almost the same as David's, yet Job goes on to beg God to look away from him long enough for him to swallow.
Hebrews quotes Psalm 8 and then admits honestly where things stand: "But now we see not yet all things put under him." We can all see that the rule over everything has not arrived. Then, in the same breath, Hebrews goes on: "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour." In place of a reason, God gives us a Person. Jesus took the low place David described, tasted death for us, and was crowned.
So take the question outside with you tonight, and ask it in whichever of the three tones is honestly yours. You will not be handed a reason. Notice instead the one thing David states as plain fact: God is mindful of you. That was never in doubt, and in Jesus you can see how far His mindfulness goes.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 62 is Light Affliction (2 Corinthians 4:17).