Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 63 · March 4
The Night Ride
“Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king’s words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.”
The month Nisan, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, and the man holding the king's wine cup has let his face slip.
Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Nehemiah's own note on that moment: Then I was very sore afraid. Between the king's question and his own answer he prays, and the prayer is one clause long, because that is all the time there was.
Then Jerusalem, and the first thing he does is nothing. So I came to Jerusalem, and was there three days. On the third night he takes a few men and one animal and goes round the perimeter in the dark, neither told I any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem. He views the walls, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire. He is measuring the size of the problem before anybody hears him describe it.
When he finally speaks, the speech has two halves and both are evidence. Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. An invisible thing and a piece of paperwork, laid side by side, and he never chooses between them.
They said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work. Within one verse Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem are laughing at them in the street.
Which sends you back to the night ride. Every stone they were laughing about, he had already been out and seen. Nothing said to him in daylight was news to the only man who had walked it in the dark.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 63 is Unmovable Kindness (Isaiah 54:10).