Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 20 · January 20
Alpha and Omega
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
Around the year 405, a Spanish lawyer in his late fifties gave up public life and began writing hymns in Latin. His name was Prudentius, and he had governed provinces for the emperor. One of his hymns has been sung in English since the nineteenth century: "Of the Father's love begotten, ere the worlds began to be, He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He."
Prudentius was singing today's verse, and singing it accurately. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. When you name both ends, you are claiming everything in between, the way we say "from A to Z." Prudentius heard that and thought of time: before the worlds began, everything that has been, and the years still to come.
John has already used the next phrase four verses earlier, when he greets the churches "from him which is, and which was, and which is to come." Look closely at the third part. The Greek could simply have said "which shall be," but it does not. A God who only goes on existing would still be there when you arrive. This God is described as coming toward you.
Think about who first heard these words. They were seven small churches in Asia, and one of them was about to be told, "thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." These churches were struggling. What reached them was not a timetable or a promise of rescue by Friday. It was the Lord Himself, who was there before their trouble started and is already standing at the far end of it. Their whole history fits inside one sentence He speaks about Himself, and He signs it "the Almighty." Whatever you are in the middle of today, it fits inside that sentence too.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 20 is Good to Those Who Wait (Lamentations 3:25).