November Trinity
Revelation 7: 9-17
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I looked and saw a great crowd beyond anyone’s power to count, from every nation and all races and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb, draped in garments of white and with palm branches in their hands, and they shout with a great voice saying, “Healing and help [salvation] to our God who sits on the throne and through the Lamb.”
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| Durer |
And all the angels were standing in a ring around the throne and the elders and the four living beings, and they fell down in front of the throne upon their faces and adored God saying,
Yea, so be it. Amen. [To our God be blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength for an age of ages. Amen.”]
All the blessing power of the Word, that creating permeates the world, all the revealing might of the spirit, that enlightens the senses appearance, all the light of wisdom that leads us to true knowledge, the secret of transformation which gives worth to all being, that brings the world forward, and all the strength and power of the spirit –they belong to our God from aeon to aeon. Yea, so be it, Amen.
And one of the elders spoke up, asking me: “These people draped in garments of white, who are they and where did they come from?”
And I said to him, “Good sir, you yourself know.”
And he said to me:
These are the ones just come from the great Suffering. They washed their garments clean and made them shining white in the blood of the Lamb.
That is why they can stand here before the throne of God
And serve him day and night in his temple.
The One who sits on the throne shall settle down upon them [dwell upon them].
They shall not hunger ever again, nor thirst again;
The sun shall not bear down too hard upon them, nor anything burn them,
Because the Lamb, in the midst of the throne, will be their shepherd
And guide them to the springs of the water of life,
And God will wipe away each teardrop from their eyes.
1st November Trinity
October 28, 2018
Revelation 7: 9-17
To live on earth is to be exposed to pain. Some of us undergo a lifetime of suffering; others less so. But if we experience it ourselves, or witness it in those around us, we all undergo pain in this life.
Why do we have to suffer? What is the point of pain? Pain and travail can open us, break open our hearts. It allows us to find true compassion. Its purpose is to create organs of perception.
The eye was created by receiving arrows of light, holding them and letting them form it into an organ to receive and organize a world of images. Just so within the soul; a process that begins with pain ends in conscious seeing.
Holding and working with pain creates an eye in the heart that can receive and make meaning out of what surrounds us. It allows us to form images, to become more conscious of what or who, stands before us.
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| Inna Myalo |
And one day we will recognize how our pain and travail has brought us to stand before an even greater being: to stand before the compassionate and loving face of God, who himself went through the Greatest Suffering.
