Wonder is Underrated

Tomorrow morning I'll be speaking in Families of Faith about some of the difficult symbols in Revelation: chiefly, the two beasts and Babylon, the Great Prostitute.

I used to really get into this stuff. It was cool being able to explain to people what it all meant, while their heads spun in awe of my vast knowledge. Then, something funny happened. After reading the book a little bit more, I figured out that I wasn't quite so smart after all.

It would be nice to reduce The Revelation down to a neat, digestible message to the Seven Churches about how Rome is eventually going to get what is coming to it, but such reductionism does a disservice to this book. In the end, there is much that is going on in this book that, even after two millenia, we still don't grasp - and probably never will.

But mystery - real, divine mystery - isn't a bad thing. It reminds us that God is God and we are not. It loosens the restraints of intellectualism and pride and Pharaseicalism (?!) and frees us to simply gaze on Him in wonder, with our jaws dropped.

I used to be afraid of where divine mystery would take me, but now I embrace it like an odd, but familiar friend. It is a place where I go when I need to be reminded of who I am not, and who He is...