Esther 6:1-8:17
God (who I assume was working through this whole episode) really can make the first to be the last and the last to be the first. In just one night he really can tear down the proud and exalt the humble.
Revelation 4:1-11
Try as I might I just can’t imagine a voice that sounds like a trumpet. And my idea of a flying eye-infested ox is so pathetic that it is truly comic. But in amongst these difficult-to-understand descriptions are two mountainous truths that are so monstrous and so overwhelming that they feel like Everest and K2 slammed down right in front of me. These truths are so big that I can’t see around them, or over them, or through them. I can either vainly try to ignore them or begin the long and arduous journey to scale them and, ultimately, to understand them. And because I haven’t yet made much progress on that journey I will struggle to even explain these truths. But the living creatures and the 24 elders have trekked far higher than I and they talk in such terms as holiness and eternity. Holiness as a term seems to have lost a lot of its punch these days. It conjures up feelings of a trip to the dentist or having your hair cut - a bit functional, a bit of a hassle, a bit dry and cold and uninspiring. But true holiness, the holiness of God is far from that. The holiness of God is like a jumbo jet to our paper aeroplane - it is epic, it is glorious, it is worthy of all glory and all respect and all accolades and all honour. Eternity, I think, still brings with it a degree of awe. But maybe even eternity is not sufficient a descriptor. The truth about God is that at the end of the day, his day hasn’t ended. 10:00 and 12:15 and 03:17 are no different to him. In fact our whole concept of time itself - a concept that we are inherently incapable of seeing beyond - is just like a caterpillar crawling along the finger of God. He was. And He is. And He is to come. You can’t get any bigger than that.
Psalm 142:1-7
“You are my portion in the land of the living”.
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