Daily Bread - As Your Days, So Your Strength
God doesn't promise you'll feel strong. He promises strength sized to the day you're actually in.
Translated from the Chinese original on huoshi.org.
Scripture
"Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be." — Deuteronomy 33:25 (KJV)
"And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." — 2 Corinthians 12:9 (KJV)
Reflection
This verse is where this site gets its name, so let's slow down and focus on it.
It comes from a scene near the very end of Deuteronomy. Moses is about to die. He has led Israel for forty years, and he won't be going with them into the land they've been walking toward. So before he goes, he blesses the tribes one by one (Deuteronomy 33). Our verse is part of his blessing over the tribe of Asher.
Think about what that means. These are a leader's last words to people he loves, about a future he won't see. He can't go with them. He can't fix their problems in advance. So what does he give them? Not a plan. A promise: as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
Strength sized to the day
Notice what the promise doesn't say. It doesn't say your days will be easy. It doesn't say you'll always feel strong. It doesn't say you'll get all your strength up front, in a lump sum, to spend however you like.
It says your strength will match your days.
A light day, light strength. A brutal day, more than you'd expect. The day your manager drops the project on you at 4:55. The week you're flying back and forth to help a parent after surgery. The month where everything seems to break at once. The promise is that God's provision is measured to the day you're in, not the one you're dreading.
That's why so many of us feel weak when we look ahead. We're trying to imagine handling next year's hardest moment with today's strength, and the numbers don't work. Of course they don't. You haven't been given that day's strength yet, because you're not in that day yet. When it comes, the strength comes with it.
Shoes for the road you're on
The first half of the verse is easy to skip: "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass." (Translators aren't fully sure of the Hebrew word here. Some versions read it as bolts or bars on a city gate rather than shoes. Either way, the picture is something strong, built to last.)
I like the shoe reading, though. Nobody needs iron shoes for a walk through the mall. You need them for rough, rocky ground and a long way to go. The promise quietly assumes the road will be hard. But it also says God will equip you for the road you're actually walking, not some easier road you wish you had.
What it looks like in a real life
Moses himself is a picture of this verse. Deuteronomy 34:7 says that when he died at a hundred and twenty, "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." Not every one of us will be like that in old age, and that's not the point. The point is that the God who carried Moses through forty years of desert gave him what he needed, all the way to the end.
Paul learned a version of the same thing. He begged God three times to take away what he called a thorn in the flesh. God didn't take it away. Instead He said, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." Not sufficient for whatever you imagine. Sufficient for thee, in this, now.
And Lamentations, written in the rubble of Jerusalem, says God's compassions "are new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23). Every morning. Not once a year. Not once you've earned it. Fresh, for the day in front of you.
So, today
You don't have to know how you'll handle every hard thing waiting for you this year. You don't have to feel ready for the next decade. You only need to walk into today, and trust that the strength for today will be there when you need it.
Then tomorrow, you get to trust Him again.
That's what we hope this site can be for you: a few minutes each morning to remember that you don't walk your days alone, and that the One who goes with you has strength enough for every single one of them.
Question to sit with
What future day have you been trying to carry with today's strength? What would it look like to trust that its strength will come when it does?
Prayer
Father, thank You for the promise You gave through Moses: as my days, so shall my strength be. I confess I often look ahead and feel I'm not enough, and on my own, I'm not. But You have never asked me to live tomorrow today. Give me the strength this day needs, no more and no less. Fit me with shoes for the road I'm on. And when tomorrow comes, meet me there too. In Jesus' name, amen.
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