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.”
Light with an address. The light dwelleth with him, and the verb is the one for taking up residence.
Bless him for it. Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his. This is a hymn, and it comes out of a man who has just been handed a secret in the dark. Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Before he goes to the king with it, before he tells anyone that his own life and his friends' lives are no longer forfeit, he stops and sings.
Count what he blesses God for. Wisdom and might. Times and seasons. He removeth kings, and setteth up kings, which is a startling thing to say out loud in Babylon, in the household of the king who had deported him, about the machinery that took his country apart. He giveth wisdom unto the wise. He revealeth the deep and secret things. He knoweth what is in the darkness.
That last one is where the praise gets its teeth, because darkness here is not somewhere God peers into from outside. The Psalms put it flatly: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. Whatever is unlit to you is furnished and bright to him, and he has been at home in the room the whole time you have been feeling your way round it.
Daniel says as much to the king within the hour, and takes no credit for any of it: this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living.
He knows what is in the dark because there is nowhere he is not already living.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 53 is Father to the Fatherless (Psalm 68:5).