The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad.
Psalm 118:24 (NIV)
The Day He Did It
“The Lord has done it this very day,” goes the song in Psalm 118, and the people singing it push each other to be glad about it on the spot. Every one of them had watched him do it, whatever it was, and they called it marvelous. The day gets marked because of what filled it. Then, still singing, they turn around and ask him to save them again.
A ferry crosses in nineteen minutes, and the man in the wheelhouse has made that crossing for eleven years. The boat mostly runs itself. At noon he watches the same shoreline come at him at the same speed, and he can tell the day of the week by which cars are in the front row, and he couldn’t tell you one thing that happened on the second Thursday of last April.
Last winter the port engine quit halfway across. He froze at the wheel, long enough to find out something about himself he would rather not know, and the mate had the fuel line shut before anyone on the car deck understood there was a problem. The boat came in slow on one screw and put every passenger off dry. He can give you that date without thinking about it, and when he tells it he leaves himself out of the middle.
Find the day God did something for you, and say what it was. Say the thing he did, and let the day take its name from that. I’d have liked to be there on the day they’re singing about.
At noon the lake is flat enough to see the bottom near the pilings, and the gulls are up on the light poles. Nothing is happening out there today that anyone will write down. The crowd in that song had a different sort of day, and they knew it while they were standing in it.
A Prayer to Remember
Bring back the day you did something for me, Lord, and make me able to say what it was. Give me the thing first, and then the day it happened on. Do it again if you’re willing, and if you’re not, I will hold on to the one I have. Make me glad about what you did, the way they were.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
