the spiritual gift of not knowing OR The Federation of people who are determined to talk about SOMETHING

Meditation this week was Revelation 4. I wanted to do one more chapter out of the Revelation because every time I read this book it lights my imagination on fire. I get consumed with the imagery and I feel like I am there. The story, God's story of the fixing of history, is open like a big gaping door (or maybe the entrance to the Holy of Holies) which I walk in and pace up and down amid the imagery and vividness of His life. My story mind leaps into action, the same mind that got drunk on Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Lord of the Rings gets lit up with the stories of God and it is sooooo good. It's good the adreniline of victory is good, it's good like the freedom of triumphant dominating life is good. It ushers me into the kingdom of God. Paul thought the midwife of faith was the law, the church fathers thought it was philosophy. I think for me maybe the midwife of faith is story. It gets us ready to see the Holy of Holies and prepares us for (never becomes for us) the presence of Almighty God.

I am also struck by how much I have no idea what any of this means. There are lamps and fires and rainbows and weird mutant creatures who can talk. It is totally incomprehensible. I mean I have theories, presuppositions which almost to my shame I take to the text before even reading it. They mean nothing. My presuppostions are shattered in this book. Maybe the message of the Revelation is that before Almighty God, you know nothing, and there is nothing you can do about it. All my high ideas and prophetic, scholarly interpretations of the text are dust and ashes. We revel in our human ignorance before a world not our own inhabited by beings not like us. We are strangers here, but the hope is, by the mercy of God, we make this place of God, this throneroom of the Most High our home.

"a man who visits another world does not come back unchanged"- CS Lewis

Daniyel