Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 365 · December 31
All the Days
“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
"And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." The word "alway" is more than poetry here. Behind it is a Greek phrase that means all the days, one after another, the whole run of them.
Look at who is standing there when Jesus says it. There are eleven men on a mountain in Galilee, and Matthew is honest about them: "they worshipped him: but some doubted." That is the company the promise is made to. Doubt is still in the group, and nobody has been sorted out first. Matthew opened his Gospel with a name, "Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us," and he closes it with the same truth, spoken by Jesus Himself. Then the book stops. His Gospel ends with Jesus promising to stay, and that is the right way to finish a book full of His commands.
All the days, then: the ones you will remember, the great many you will not, and this one too. He is with you in every one of them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 365 is He Will Finish the Work (Philippians 1:6).