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. Alway is not a poetic word here. Behind it is a phrase that means all the days, one after another, the whole run of them.
Look at who is standing there when he says it. Eleven men on a hill in Galilee, and Matthew, who had no reason to include this and includes it anyway, writes: they worshipped him: but some doubted. That is the company the promise is made to, doubt still in the room, nobody sorted out first. Matthew opened this Gospel with a name, Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us, and closes it with the same fact in the first person. Then the book stops. His Gospel ends on a person staying rather than on an instruction, which is a strange way to finish a book of commands and the right one.
All the days. The ones you will remember, and the great many you will not, and this one.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 365 is He Will Finish the Work (Philippians 1:6).