Daily Manna · Day 331 · November 27
Eternal Light and Reign
“And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”
Some readers find this verse a little sad at first. "There shall be no night there" can sound like a loss. Some of us do our best thinking in the dark, and a place with the dark taken out of it can seem like a place with something missing.
So follow the light through the Bible, because John is finishing a thread that runs all the way back to the beginning. It starts with God saying, "Let there be light," three days before He made the sun. That already tells you the sun was never the true source. Isaiah picks up the thread and says it plainly to a ruined city: "The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." In his letter, John writes that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." Jesus says, "I am the light of the world." Then, in the chapter just before this one, John sees that "the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it."
So nothing good is being taken away. What ends is the old arrangement, where light comes to you from far away, on a schedule, with gaps in it. Every lamp you have ever lit was a way of working around those gaps.
Then comes the phrase nobody expects at the end: "they shall reign for ever and ever." John wrote this for people who spent their lives being pushed around by other people's power. He never settles for saying they will simply rest, or finally be left alone. He says they will reign.
So the promise is more than a better lamp. It is the end of needing one, because the Lord God Himself will be their light. Whatever frightens you at three in the morning is already small beside that promise, even while you lie awake. The night you are in now will not have the last word, because God has promised a day that has no night in it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 331 is Iron Sharpeneth Iron (Proverbs 27:17).