Growing up in a Christian home & church in the Midwest, my relationship with the book of Revelation was one of avoidance. The images of fearful creatures and its reputation of judgment and wrath made me avoid the last book of the Bible well into my 20’s. Scary movies aren’t my thing, and neither was the book of Revelation. And then, in an effort to make friends in a new town, I signed up for a session of Bible Study Fellowship on Revelation. It was then my view of this book altered dramatically, and I came to see it as a book of promise.

Chapter by chapter, I learned the patterns in each letter to the churches – Affirmation, Correction, and Promise. In this week’s sermon where we studied the Letter to the Church at Thyatira, God tells them they are wonderful at love, service, faith and patient endurance, but they are tolerating idol worship, and nobody is speaking up about it. And that has to change. In his sermon, Arlen mentioned the idea of “sinning with a high hand” – you know your actions are wrong, but you do them anyway, perhaps out of doubt, fear, or just not caring. The problems and issues of the early church feel so familiar to me. Doubt? Check. Apathy? Check. Not speaking up? Check.

Yet, in each letter, God calls out to his people as “the Overcomers” and then promises something vast and good and unfathomable – the tree of life, a crown of life, a new name, or in the case of the Church of Thyatira, the Morning Star. I find that incredibly beautiful. As broken as this earthly existence can be, there are eternal promises that break through and transcend the brokenness.

Singing the words of In Christ Alone reminded me that “As he stands in victory/Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me/For I am his and his is mine.” Even though we are given the picture in Revelation of the martyrs under the altar crying out “How long, O Lord?” we are also promised that God is making all things new. That there are countless “hallelujahs” being raised in a mighty chorus in praise to a God who is the Alpha and the Omega, the 1st and the last, the beginning and the end. I may struggle with not being able to foresee the details of my story, but I know who formed me, and I know who will bring me home. And that is a promise worth grasping tightly.

~ Gretchen Williams