Daily Lesson for October 30, 2017

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Revelation chapter 1 verses 5 through 11: 

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. 

7 Look! He is coming with the clouds;

   every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him;

   and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.

So it is to be. Amen.

8 ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. 

9 I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11saying, ‘Write in a book what you see . . .’”

John the Seer is writing from a place of exile on the isle of Patmos. Great are the powers on the throne of the nations and the faithful people of God wait and long and wonder if hope is to be born again. They wait. They wonder. They endure. 

And then John sees the vision and shares it with the people in waiting. The LORD God is not only Alpha, but also Omega — the first and the last, “the one who is, who was, and who is to come.”

For all who live in exile, for all who wait for a more hopeful day, for all who wonder if things can or will ever change, for all those who now endure, the vision of John the Seer speaks yet again: God is Alpha and Omega.  

In other words, God finishes what God starts.

And I remember that old African American spiritual:

“Walk together children, don't you get weary,

walk together children, don't you get weary,

walk together children, don't you get weary,

there's a great camp meeting in the promised land.”