Monday 11th December - Revelation 8

Today’s chapter is Revelation 8

Tom writes:

The vision of the 7 trumpets seems too much for simple minds to comprehend. If you feel overwhelmed or confused; don’t despair. Apocalyptic literature is intended to conceal and allude. It is meant to present the truth behind a veil which the faithful can lift through growing engagement with The Lamb. But even our wisest prayer warriors, with a lifetime imbued with the scriptures, still see the truth in Revelation as in a glass darkly; enough to advance but not so much that we get proud. A key method for these chapters is to focus on what you can understand, on what the Spirit highlights to you. Read the other bits but let them remain on the shelf to be considered “next time round”. What am I “grabbing” today? Well, I’m drawn to see how all of God’s de-creating work - crashing down cosmic constants, letting fire do its work - is in response to his people’s prayers. God is doing what his people have been begging him to do for years.

And so, I think that - if we follow the tone of their blasts - the trumpets should lead us to prayer and perseverance. Real prayer, proper prayer that fills the golden bowl of heaven. This prayer expresses a sickness with the prominence of pride. This prayer is pained by the posing of the Powers. Do we pray those prayers? Do we allow ourselves to express agonised dissatisfaction with the state of this earth? I, for one, am sick of all the pride and all the hate. I’m sick of humanities’ sin that requires this kind of tragic response. In fact I’m sick of my own sin. Woe to us. Woe to me. Woe caused by me and my always-in-the-background, never-quite-quashed desire to do my own thing, to put two fingers up to God and choose to please myself. Woe to my flesh that keeps on dragging me down to my most base self. Now this woe must never become self-hatred (or other person hatred). With the woe we go to pray. We repent of our fallenness. We beg God to change things, to win his earth back in our days. And then, having prayed, we go. We go to living like the Lamb. We go to trusting in the God who always reigns, who always watches, who will never miss the tiniest act of faithfulness on our part. Yes, we go to faithful endurance. Most of all we go to faithful endurance. Knowing that life will be hard, that the decreation work of God against all that is evil will be robust; that the medicine will require a massive gulp. But we know that if we faithfully endure then all our prayers will be answered once the fire of God has done its work.

Question for reflection

What pained prayers are you praying about the state of the earth?