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The Scroll and the Lamb

A Meditation on Revelation 5

There’s a scroll.

It’s sealed.
Seven seals deep.
In other words…completely locked, untouchable, unknowable.

This scroll holds the story.
The meaning.
The healing.
The justice.
The redemption.
The unraveling of everything that’s wrong
and the unveiling of what is right.

And the question is:
Who is worthy to open it?

And the room gets still.
All of heaven holds its breath.
Because this isn’t just any scroll.
This is the scroll.
The one that contains the purposes of God
for all of creation.

And no one can open it.

No one.

Not the mighty.
Not the religious.
Not the brilliant.
Not the morally perfect.
Not the ones with empires.
Not the ones with resumes.

So John weeps.

Because if no one can open it,
then nothing gets healed.
Nothing gets made right.
The ache stays.
The wound festers.
The longing lingers without hope.

But then…

An elder says,
“Do not weep.”

Because there is One.

And now the paradox.

You expect a lion.
Fierce. Powerful. Roaring.

But what appears?

A Lamb.
Slaughtered.
Yet standing.
Because this kingdom is upside-down.
And right-side up.

Power, not in domination,
but in surrender.
Victory, not in conquest,
but in sacrifice.

This Lamb walks right into the center.
Because that’s where He belongs.
The center of heaven.
The center of time.
The center of every story ever told.

He takes the scroll.
Because only Love
has the right to unfold the purposes of God.

And all of heaven erupts…
Angels, elders, creatures…
they sing a new song.
Because new songs always follow
when Love takes the scroll.

Worthy.
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.

He doesn’t take the scroll by force.
He receives it by worth.

Because what changes the world
is not brute strength
or violent religion
or clever systems.

It’s a wounded Lamb.
Who bears the pain of the world
and still stands.

So today,
when the world feels sealed shut,
when the ache is loud,
when the tears come easily,
remember:

There is One.
He has taken the scroll.
And He is unfolding
everything
with wisdom, with power, with mercy.

The Lamb reigns.

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Tables, Wine, and the Wild God

A meditation on John 2

There’s a wedding.
There’s a feast.
There’s a crisis.
There’s a God who saves the best wine for last.

John 2 isn’t just a story.
It’s a sign.
A disruption.
A whisper.
A shout.

The wedding at Cana is where the divine touches the mundane, where water, ordinary and utilitarian, is transfigured into celebration.
Into joy.
Into the best wine they’ve ever tasted.

Which says something, doesn’t it?
That Jesus’ first public miracle isn’t about power or performance or even preaching.
It’s about presence.
It’s about rescue from embarrassment.
It’s about joy.

But don’t get too comfortable.

Because the second half of the chapter?
He’s flipping tables.
He’s cracking whips.
He’s purging the temple.
And if you’re paying attention, it’s the same Jesus.

The same Jesus who fills cups with wine,
is the one who empties temples with righteous fire.

Why?
Because both scenes are about space.
Sacred space.
Sacred time.
Sacred encounter.

At Cana, Jesus fills empty vessels.
At the temple, He confronts empty religion.

The God who rejoices with you at weddings
is the same God who dismantles what gets in the way of worship.
He will not let your shame define the party.
He will not let the machine define the temple.

Because He’s remaking everything.
From the inside out.
Even the temple…He says it’s His body now.

Which means:
the presence of God isn’t confined to bricks and bureaucracy.
It’s now mobile.
Incarnate.
Alive.

You. Me.
We are now the vessels.
The living temples.
The carriers of joy and justice.

So, what if the miracle today isn’t just wine from water?
What if it’s waking up to the Spirit’s wild disruption?
What if it’s letting Him tip over the tables we’ve grown too fond of?

Because Jesus didn’t come just to improve your life.
He came to remake it.
To fill it.
To turn it upside down… so it could finally be right-side up.

So maybe the real question is:
Where in your life is He trying to pour new wine?
And where is He flipping tables?

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Doxology in the Darkness

Meditations on Good Friday, Stanislaus Rapotec
04 Oct 1913 – 18 Nov 1997

Good Friday, which remembers the crucifixion of Jesus, has been given a number of titles over the centuries. Some construe “Good Friday” evolved from a mistranslation of the German phrase “God’s Friday” or “Guttes Freitag.” 1290 is the earliest known use of “Goude Friday” found in a South English dictionary.

It has been called Holy Friday, Great Friday, Mourning Friday, Silent Friday, and even Long Friday.

Good Friday is good because it is so bad.

On Good Friday foundations were shaken, hopes were crushed, and the inconceivable became reality. Good Friday pulls the vaporous veil of life aside and reveals things often don’t go the way we want. Incongruence is the norm. The daily bits and pieces of living have been turned upside down.

It’s called “Good” because Jesus absorbed all the bad, dark, injustice, evil and sin of the past, present, and future into His own body, nailing it all to the cross so that we could be forgiven and freed.

It’s called “Holy” because the love demonstrated by Jesus at this moment causes a holy hush to blanket the world; we remove our shoes entering holy space. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)

It’s called “Mourning” because our hearts break when confronted with the brutality that accosted Love. The emptiness we feel in the immediate aftermath of so great a tragedy bores deeper and deeper into our soul.

It’s called “Long” because Jesus’ friends didn’t know Resurrection Sunday would actually happen. They entered the silence of a long Friday night…a long Saturday…and a long Saturday night of despair and devastation. They cried out the opening word of Lamentations, “Echah” which means “How?”

How could this have happened?
How could you allow this God?
How will I ever find joy again?

But this is the journey of Good Friday. This is the journey of life. We must learn to sing songs in the night. We must learn to trust God has something better beyond the dark night. Brennan Manning said it this way:

“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.”
~Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

I am still learning this lesson, the lesson of whispering a doxology in darkness. In some moments I am surprisingly able, yet in other charcoal moments, the darkness overwhelms me… until I remember.

There is nothing about Good Friday that seems right, and that is the point.

On Good Friday, God dealt death, darkness, and devastation so fierce a blow that the upturned tables of life started to turn right side up.

The dominion of death was changed from a finality to a fermata.

The darkness of injustice was pierced with the Light of Love.

The dungeon of sin was given the keys to freedom.

We live in the “now and not yet” period where Love has pierced the darkness bringing about the capacity for heaven to invade earth. However, heaven and earth will not be united into the Oneness of God’s presence until Jesus returns again (Maranatha).

So, in the meantime, through faith, trust, and love, we push back the darkness as we learn to whisper doxologies in the dark.

“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
~Psalms 30:5

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Generating Good

generous-2

Generosity is a brilliant word and a powerful concept. Kahlil Gibran states , “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.” That is worthy of pondering for a bit.

From this word we understand other things better, like, generate, generator, generative.

Generosity generates something…
It creates something…
From nothing, generosity breathes life and regenerates something beautiful.

However, generosity is not simply about money and wealth. It is a lifestyle that is always humming with creative goodness that brings light to dark places, food to starving spaces and beauty to desolate places.

Steve Goodier sums up the scope well:

“Money is not the only commodity that is fun to give. We can give time, we can give our expertise, we can give our love or simply give a smile. What does that cost? The point is, none of us can ever run out of something worthwhile to give.”

Generosity also has the power to free us from a myopic life of self-everthing. Self-service, selfishness, self-reliance, self-worship. The worship of self has run across the borders of narcissism in our culture, and generosity has the ability to heal us of this most pernicious disease. The Buddha noted:

“Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.”

The following video is a commercial from Thailand…it reveals the power that a little generosity has to make the lives of others better, and when you do that you cannot escape the personal benefit generosity re-infuses into your own life.

That video causes an unsolicited smile to form on my lips…

Being generous feels good and the scientific stats reveal that generous people are healthier, happy and live longer lives that are worth living.

The Bible has scads of passages about generosity, here are a few to help you pray and invite a spirit of generosity into your life:

A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.
Proverbs 11:25

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  2 Corinthians 9:7

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  Luke 6:38 

Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. Psalm 112:5

For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.  2 Corinthians 8:12

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.  Luke 6:30

May you realize just how rich you really are and find yourself coming alive as you become a generous soul that gives especially when there is no chance of repayment.