Revealing finishes

We will finish a study on Revelation next week after about 15 weeks. Life has changed for every person in the study during that period because that is what life does.

I can't help wondering, however, if we understand Revelation any more now than we did when we began the study. I probably don't, I must confess. But I began to read a book last night that tells me one must read John as a poet, as a pastor to the seven churches and as a theologian. I've read him only as if he were theologian. I've tried for all these years to UNDERSTAND the book without giving John such wonderful credit for his writing ability and his imagination.

Imagination? I hear the literalists cry out. I hear those who read it as chronology of the end times singing not in harmony but in heated anger.

I'm no authority, my friends. I can't tell you why the book wanders up and down hills, through strange fearful brooks and around and up mountainsides filled with danger.

I can't answer the questions of one wonderful friend in the class who keeps asking if she should center on this particular detail or that particular detail or not worry about any of the details or what. I don't know what to say to her because I do not know either.

Is it important that heaven is a certain height, depth, etc? I wouldn't think so, but then John must have thought so or he wouldn't have included it.

So what is the answer to all this?

I think the answer is this: Be in that number. Be in the book of life. Be there. Be.

God created. I beieve that is how this all began. God will re-create. That is how all this will end.

In the middle is life, sometimes swell and sometimes stinky.

As we were pulling away last night, the Spirit gave me one last thought. I turned to a couple and said, "Did you notice what wasn't mentioned a single time in our description of heaven tonight?"

They thought for a second and a smile came over one of their faces as recognition set in. "Religion," she said.

Indeed.

No BP oil spills. No serial killers. No bills to be pain on time or later. No worries. No stresses. NO MOVES as we will always be home.

And NO RELIGION.

Only God, who cares not for religion but cares greatly for relationship. The Bible closes by telling us God will live among us.

That's the focal point of Revelation. That's the Revelation itself. Jesus and God the Father and the Spirit himself will be with us, not every once in a while but continually. Aint' it special?