Chief

It is five minutes before the service. A man sits in his car in the church parking lot with the engine off, rehearsing a sentence he has never said out loud to anyone inside that building.

We know that parking lot, and we have a sentence like his. Over the years we have worked out exactly how much of it can be said, and to whom, and we have decided that saying all of it would cost more than we can pay.

Paul put his sentence into a letter, where anyone could read it: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Chief means first, at the head of the list. Notice the tense as well. Paul says "I am," not "I was," even though the Damascus road was years behind him. Two verses earlier he says what he has in mind: he had been "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious." Then he explains why he put it in writing: "that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." Paul offers himself as the sample. If God's mercy reached the man at the top of the list, nobody further down is out of reach.

Lord, we have been saying the safe version for years. We have trimmed it for the people we sit near in church each week, until it stopped costing anything to say. Today we bring You the whole sentence, the one that stays in the car. Take it, and make of us what You made of Paul: living proof of Your patient mercy. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 72 is Do Not Fear (Isaiah 41:10).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two