The Day Is Thine

Axes and hammers are smashing the carved woodwork of the temple. Smoke hangs over the temple hill. And above it all, as if nothing were wrong, the sun comes up on time.

The man who wrote Psalm 74 is standing in the middle of that. "They break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers." "They have cast fire into thy sanctuary." Then comes the line that measures the whole disaster: "We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long." The temple is in ruins, there is no word from God, and nobody knows how long it will last.

So the writer goes looking for evidence that the fire could not reach. That is why the psalm suddenly speaks of creation. "Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength." "Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter." And in the middle of those lines stands today's verse: "The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun."

Taken out on its own, that sounds like a pleasant thought about sunrises. In its place in the psalm, it is an argument, and it is made in protest. The writer is listing to God the things God still owns, in a city where God's own house has just been burned. The day and the night are still on the list, and summer and winter are still turning. The enemies who broke into the temple could not touch any of them.

The psalm ends without an answer. It is still pleading with God to "arise" and to "remember." You can pray that way too. Whatever was taken from you this year, the same hands that made the light and the sun are still holding the day and the night. Bring Him your "how long," just as this writer did. Tomorrow morning He will send the sun again, and every morning He sends is a reminder that the world is still His.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 87 is The Finish Line (2 Timothy 4:7-8).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two