Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 53 · February 22
Where the Light Lives
“He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.”
Daniel says that light has a home. "The light dwelleth with him," he sings, and to dwell somewhere is to live there. God does not have to go and fetch light from somewhere else. It lives with Him.
These words are part of a hymn of praise, and they come from a man who has just been given a secret in the dark: "Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision." The king had ordered the death of all his wise men, Daniel among them, because nobody could tell him his dream. Yet Daniel does not hurry to the king first. He stops and praises: "Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his."
Listen to what he praises God for. He names wisdom and might, and times and seasons. He sings that "he removeth kings, and setteth up kings," which is a bold thing to say out loud in Babylon. Daniel lives in the court of the very king who carried him away from home, and he is talking about the power that took his country apart. Then he goes on: "he giveth wisdom unto the wise," "He revealeth the deep and secret things," and "he knoweth what is in the darkness."
That last line gives the praise its strength. The darkness is not a place God has to peer into from outside. A psalm says it plainly: "the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." Whatever is dark to you is fully lit to Him. He has been at home in that room all the time you have been feeling your way around it.
When Daniel stands before the king, he says the same thing and takes no credit at all: "this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living."
So here is the truth to carry into your own dark places: God knows what is in them, because there is nowhere He does not already live, and the light lives with Him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 53 is Father to the Fatherless (Psalm 68:5).