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?”
The question in this verse is never answered by the psalm that asks it.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? David asks it under a sky he has just called the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained. Fingers, for the sky. He makes it small in the hand that made it, then asks why that hand bothers with something smaller still.
What follows is a description of what happened. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. The psalm tells you the position man was put in and never says why he was worth putting there. It closes by repeating its own first line, and the question is left standing in the middle of it.
It gets asked twice more, in two different tones, and Scripture keeps both.
Psalm 144 asks it calmly: LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! Job asks it while being watched by God and hating every minute: 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? Identical words, and in Job's mouth the attention is the affliction. He asks God to look away long enough for him to swallow.
Hebrews quotes the psalm and then says something honest about the state of the promise. But now we see not yet all things put under him. The dominion has visibly not arrived. And then, in the same breath, We see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour. What gets offered in place of a reason is a person.
You are welcome to take the question outside tonight and ask it in whichever of the three tones is honestly yours. No reason is going to be handed down. The mindfulness was never the part in doubt; it is the one thing in the verse David states as a fact.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 62 is Light Affliction (2 Corinthians 4:17).