She was born 100 years ago in Ashland, Kentucky.  My grandmother nearly died after her birth.  Healthcare was not as advanced in 1924.  My mom lived in towns and communities all over the West and in Kentucky: Phoenix, Big Bow, Stapleton, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, St. Louis, Elizabethtown, Felicity, Osh Kosh, Carrolton, Prestonsburg, even Barbados!

In college she reconnected with a childhood friend – my dad – and they were married right after World War 2.  Within 11 years, she found herself with four boys and all the boisterous rambunctiousness that comes with them.  She’d seen what city life did to boys, so she prayed for a place in the country to raise us.  God granted her request, and when her oldest was 14, we settled into a little house outside Morgantown, Kentucky.  She loved all of us intently and prayed for us, often weeping in her earnestness.  We didn’t just grow up.  She, in lockstep with my dad, RAISED us!

I wish every young boy had a mom who loved us as much as she did.  And when we launched out on our own, she didn’t stop.  Every mother knows it doesn’t end when a child heads out into the world to establish their own place.  Her prayers followed us even when she didn’t hear from us for months.  There were no cell phones then and expensive long-distance calls were reserved for serious life events.  We weren’t that committed to writing letters either.  But she cried out to Jesus for every one of us every day.

​Sometimes we boys got tired of all her passionate lamentations.  But I’d give anything to hear her “storm the gates of heaven” one more time.

John the Revelator has just wrapped up the messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor.  Now he is invited to look at something else.  The scene before him is fantastical, to say the least!  Maybe like an LSD trip.  I think that’s a pretty good analogy.  We cannot even imagine what God is like.  We live in a shadow world and have no way to describe what the world of light is like.  Imagine that you were blind from birth.  You’ve never seen anything – ever.  Suddenly you can see.  Without a lifetime of interacting with what you are perceiving, you have no context for making sense of what your eyes are now beholding.  This is precisely John’s dilemma.  Hence the crazy way he relates what is before him in this vision.

What I think he’s trying to reveal to us is the magnificence of the throne room of heaven.  Of course, using the term “throne room” is yet another attempt to paint a picture of God and the actual realities of his presence.

But what does all that mean for me today?  Well, first of all, I don’t want to get mired down trying to define every detail of what John included here.  It’s like one of your dreams where people, objects, and environments constantly morph into something different.  John’s lame attempts to describe it are like sand that slips through your fingers.  You think you have a grasp on it, and then it’s gone.

This chapter introduces us to the revelation – the key word here – of the magnificence and inscrutability of God.  As in John’s time, two-bit dictators and even some world-wide kingdoms were seen as unstoppable.  Christians were being persecuted, starved, their means of living destroyed, family members disappeared, and many slaughtered, sometimes for entertainment.  It was an ugly time and there was little hope that things would get better.  God doesn’t look very big against this backdrop of hopelessness and despair.  The whole world was “going to hell in a handbasket” and God looks powerless to do anything about it.
Now Jesus decides to reveal who God is to the beleaguered Christians through this vision to John.  And this chapter reveals a mighty God who sees everything, and who makes the kingdoms of this world look like children playing with sandcastles.  It is an overpowering picture of the God that we serve and the insignificance of the puny governments and conspiracies of the world we live in.

My response to this:

​Lord, thank you for this revelation of your majesty and unstoppable sovereignty.  As I prepare for whatever this world system throws at me, I will remember that you are the ultimate authority.  I will not live in fear of what Satan is conspiring to do to me or my family.  I will put my complete trust in you knowing that you see all and know all – even what is going to take place later.