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 who had governed provinces for the emperor gave up public life and began writing hymns in Latin. His name was Prudentius. One of them 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."
He was singing this verse, and singing it accurately. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and naming both ends is a way of claiming everything between them. Prudentius heard that and reached for time: ere the worlds began to be, and the things that have been, and the years still to come.
John has already used the middle phrase four verses earlier, greeting the churches from him which is, and which was, and which is to come. Sit on the third clause, because the Greek would allow which shall be and that is not what it says. A God who merely continues would still be there when you arrive. This one is described as travelling toward you.
Notice who is listening. Seven small congregations in Asia, one of which is about to be told it has a name that thou livest, and art dead. These are churches that are losing, and what arrives is no timetable and no rescue by Friday. The one who was there before their trouble started is already standing at the far end of it, the whole of their history sits inside a single sentence he is speaking about himself, and he signs it the Almighty.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 20 is Good to Those Who Wait (Lamentations 3:25).