Until the Day Dawn

Charles Wesley published a morning hymn in 1740 whose first verse ends with a line lifted whole out of this passage: Day-star, in my heart appear. The verse after it says that dark and cheerless is the morn, unaccompanied by thee.

Peter is writing near the end of his life and knows it. Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, he says, and he wants them to have something once he is gone. So he tells them what he saw. They had not followed cunningly devised fables; he and the others were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He means the mountain, and the voice, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He was standing there when it happened.

Then he sets the written word alongside it: We have also a more sure word of prophecy. Versions differ over what more sure means. Some read it as more certain than the vision he has just described; others read the prophetic word as confirmed by what happened on the mountain. What he tells them to do next is identical under both readings, and it is the part to hold: whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place.

A lamp in a dark room does not pretend to be the sun. It is enough to cross the floor by.

The arrangement is temporary by design: until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts. He is describing the interval you are living in, between a light you carry in your hand and a morning nobody has seen yet.

Enough light to cross this room is what is being offered, and it turns out to be enough. The lamp will be in your hand on the days the sun is only a rumour, and the morning will come up in you from the inside, the way he says it comes, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts, and nobody will need to tell you it has.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 58 is Seated on the Throne (Revelation 3:21).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two