Revelation

One cannot think of the word revelation without considering John’s treatise of that name ending the New Testament of the Christian Bible. This is a great read – open to many, many interpretations. I don’t want to get involved in the myriad views and interpretations of what John penned. But I do want to reflect on what this deep reflection by John means to me.

I am not a biblical scholar, nor am I an expert on the historical life when John wrote this. But when I plow through all that he wrote, I arrive at the twenty-first chapter, second line, and read: “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” And as I reflect on this vision and this prophecy, I think of a different kind of time in a different time of place open to all of God’s children. I think of what life could be!

From Genesis 1 to Revelation 21, I experience a journey of mortal man in a special covenant with God. We have kept this covenant, and we have broken it. We have loved it, and we have hated it. We have lived in alternate cities. One is a green pasture of plenty and love, prosperity and grace; the other is a product of a selfish body of mortal men, lives of violence and hate, poverty and need. The first is filled with God’s Love; the second rejects all of God’s outstretched hands.

John shows me a way to live, as did Jesus. It is the same lighted path of plenty, not material plenty, but spiritual plenty filled with the salvation offered by God. Jesus shows us how we can trust God, how we can Love each other in His name. God is with us; God is within us; God is a permanent part of us. God creates us anew every morning we arise to His Love and Grace. “A God who spends everything to find and recover us. A God who empties himself to fill us so that we might never be lost or alone again.”

When I am on the road paved by Jesus, I experience revelation supreme. I arise from the darkness created by out mortal society to the light of God’s Truth, the light of God’s Love, and the light of eternal Life. John’s Revelation allows me to look back on what could have been with me and allows me to be grateful that God is within me, guiding me to eternal life.