3rd November Trinity
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| Throne of God |
November 16, 2014
Revelations 7: 9-17
Next 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.”
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.
3rd November Trinity
November 16, 2014
Revelations 7: 9-17
In life we experience the events and conditions of the
world; we receive the actions, the words and thoughts of others. And we suffer
because we are open to being acted upon.
One pre-Christian response to this fact of our existence
was to remove oneself from suffering by cultivating non-attachment. This is
perhaps not a bad start, for we frequently suffer because we are over-attached
to outcomes; we may be egotistically trying to spare ourselves. Yet Christ, the
God made human, taught us that suffering can have redemptive power, especially
when undergone willingly and for the sake of others. Suffering can be a real
eye-opener.
Hardship and adversity can have a purifying effect on our
egotism. It can cleanse us of our prideful sense that we can control our own
universe. Adversity endured can teach us that there are gracious gifts to be
found in places we do not wish to go, gifts we didn’t know we wanted. It can
teach us that suffering can lead to transformation.
Necessary suffering well encountered washes our soul
garments clean. ‘Thy greater Will be done,’ can lead us to recognize that there
is a greater purpose than our everyday minds can know. In suffering we can find
the comfort and consolation of a God who intimately knows what we are going through.
For He has been there Himself. Indeed, He continues to occupy the precincts of
suffering so that He will be there for us when we find ourselves there. He will help us to make something out of it.
The poet describes this process:
…And if, in the changing phases
of man's life
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| Snowdrops in Snow |
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my
heart seems dead
and strength is gone,
and my life
is only the leavings of a life:
and still, among it all,
snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches
of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the
withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought
forth before, new blossoms of me
then I must know that still
I am in the hands of the unknown
God,
he is breaking me down to his own
oblivion
to send me forth on a new
morning, a new man.[1]
