1st November Trinity
Revelation 1, 1-20
This is the unveiling of the being of Jesus Christ, which proceeds out
of the divine world for those who would serve him. To them shall be revealed
what must of necessity happen in the future and which powerfully presses into
world events. God formed this revelation in imagery and sent it through his
angel to his servant John. And so John speaks as a witness to everything he
saw, that is, to the Divine Word, and to the life of Jesus Christ, which serves
as a testimony. Blessed is he who knows how to read the prophetic words, and
blessed are those who know how to hear them, and all who take what is written
in this book into their souls; for time presses.
John, to the seven congregations in Asia:
Grace and peace to you
From Him who is, and who was, and who is coming
And from the seven creating spirits before his
throne
And from Jesus Christ.
By his witnessing he is the archetype of trust.
He is the first born from the realm of death,
He is the leading spirit of the Kings on earth.
He has turned to us in love, and by the power of
his blood
He has released us from the spell of sin which lay
upon us.
He has established us as true kings and made us
into priests
before the divine Ground of the World, his Father.
To him belongs all light of the spirit and all
power of soul from aeon to aeon. Amen.
See: he comes in the realm of the clouds.
All eyes shall see him, also the eyes of those who
pierced him.
And men down the ages will lament about him. Yes.
Amen.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
Thus speaks the Lord our God
who is, and who was, and who is coming
the divine ruler of the world.
I, John, your brother and your companion in all trials and also in the
inner kingdom and in the power of endurance which we possess through our
one-ness with Jesus: I was on the island of Patmos. There it was granted to me
to receive a share of the divine Word and to bear witness to the sufferings of
Jesus.
On the Lord’s Day I was lifted up to the world of spirit, and I heard
behind me a mighty voice like the sound of a trumpet. It said: write what you
see in a book and send it to the seven congregations: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to
Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia and to Laodicia.
And I turned to see him whose voice was speaking to me. And as I turned
I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands, a figure
like that of the Son of Man:
clothed with a long billowing garment,
encircled round his breast with a golden band;
his head and his hair shining white like snow white wool,
his eyes like a flame of fire,
his feet like burnished bronze glowing in a furnace,
his voice like the rushing of many streams of water.
In his hand he held seven stars;
from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword
and his face shone, as the sun shines in its full radiance.
And when I saw him, I fell at this feet and was as if dead. But he laid
his right hand upon me and said:
“Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and the living one. I
was dead, and look! I am living and I bear the life of the world through all
aeons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and of the shades. Write down what
you see: what is now, and what is to come.
The secret of the seven stars, which you see in my right hand, and of
the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the picture in the
spirit for the angels of the seven congregations, and the seven lampstands are
the seven congregations themselves.”
1st November
Trinity
October 30, 2011
Revelation 1: 1-20
“Grace and peace to you from Him who is, and who was, and
who is coming.” Rev.
1:4
Rain after a long drought, or the first snowfall, brings us
delight. We experience it as a gift from above. Grace, too, is a gift from
above, a gift of light, of warmth, of strength. To grace is to adorn, to
elevate. Grace contains balance and beauty.
The gift of grace is given to us by Christ, He who is the
model, the archetype of all the gifts of grace. Along with His grace, He is
giving us the gift of Himself.
He is, as John says, the archetype of trust. Because of His
trust in us, we can find faith in life, trust in others, and in ourselves as we
take our rightful place in God’s universe.
He, the first-born from the realm of death, gives us the
grace of being able to be reborn out of the realm of death. For us on earth,
that can mean the grace to rise renewed from all our changes, all our woundings
and losses, all our little deaths.
He gives us all the grace to be priests, that is, to be
connected in service to God and His angels, to be connected in service to
others and to our own higher Self.
And with this inflow of His grace, we feel a calm and yet
dynamic peace. For we know that we are exactly where we need to be, doing the
Great Work He wants us to be doing, strengthened by Him who is the prototype,
who was there, for us, first.
In the words of Wendell Berry:
See how without confusion it
is
all that it is, and how
flawless
its grace is. Running or walking,
the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way
is clear.”[1]
[1] “Grace” by Wendell Berry,
for Gurney Norman, quoting him.
Picture
of the Son of Man, woodcut by Durer.
