Monday, April 29, 2019
When I turned to see who was speaking to me, I saw seven gold lampstands. And standing in the middle of the lampstands was someone like the Son of Man. He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. He held seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword came from his mouth. And his face was like the sun in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave. “Write down what you have seen—both the things that are now happening and the things that will happen. This is the meaning of the mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. Revelation 1:12-20
More than
a half-century after the resurrection Jesus appeared to his beloved apostle,
John. John was at this time the lone
survivor of the original 12, exiled by the Roman emperor to the tiny isle of
Patmos. John had faithfully served Jesus
for all these decades since the last time he’d seen Him at the ascension. That last meeting was mysterious and awe-inspiring,
but this one was overwhelming!
Jesus
instructs John to write down what he’s seeing and hearing. This simple instruction to record what was happening
at that moment, and, particularly, the coming events (that which, for us, is
history leading up to the 21st century and beyond), is a declaration
that all of it is in the hands of the One Who IS alive!
Jesus, the
God-man, fully-God and fully-human, is everything opposite of Terminator. He is incarnate, the human expression of the
vitality of Heavenly Father. His mission
is not domination and oppression with killing and mayhem. Rather, his works are healing, setting
captives free, and giving Himself as a sacrifice so that all might come to know
God with the penalty of sin taken out of the way. He came that we might see clearly and embrace
our Creator. If evil is the terminator,
Christ was the extender, the One who would offer his life to us,
eternally. This is what the risen Jesus told John…I
died, but look – I am alive forever and ever!
And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
The older
I get, the bigger these words become. It’s
difficult at any age to ignore our mortality; it’s impossible to NOT think
about it every day when you’re on the down-slope, past 70. The echo of that phrase, threescore-and-ten bellows
around in your brain at least a few times every day. Old people don’t just think about death;
the reminders (aches in places you never knew existed, graying, wrinkles,
low-energy….and I won’t even say the thing about memory lapses), well, those
reminders are too stark to ignore.
And so, we
arrive at the dividing-line between Arnold and Jesus, one came to bring fear
and bondage; the other came to offer his nail-scarred hand as a bridge to the
Giver of life and total joy.
For You Today
He’s alive! And He said we could be too!
No comments:
Post a Comment