Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 68 · March 9
The Name He Gave
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”
How long have you been asking God for something you could hold? A clear answer about the job. A name for what is wrong with you. One sentence you could write down and carry back to the people waiting on you.
Moses wanted a name, and he had a working reason for wanting one. He was being sent to a people four hundred years into Egypt who would ask which God had sent him. What is his name? what shall I say unto them? A name in that world was a handle. It told you who you were dealing with, what he governed, what he could be expected to do. What came back was a sentence built out of the verb to be. I AM THAT I AM. Bibles print I AM WHO I AM and I will be what I will be, and the reason they wobble is that the Hebrew genuinely holds both. Then the short form, cut down to something a man could carry into a room: I AM hath sent me unto you.
Go back two verses and see what has already happened. Moses had asked, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and the answer came back about God: Certainly I will be with thee. Same verb. He asked about himself and was told God would be there; he asked for God's name and was told the same thing again, in three words that are almost the whole Hebrew alphabet of being. Twice he reached for a definition, and twice he was handed a presence.
You may never get the sentence you wanted for the people waiting on you. What is on offer is older, harder to carry, and impossible to put in a message. He is there, in the present tense, at the thing you are dreading on Thursday. Take that in with you and find out whether it holds.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 68 is Christ Our Life (Colossians 3:4).