Revd Sara’s Reflection for Bible Month June 2023 – Book of Revelation
During the month of June you are invited to read the book of Revelation and prayerfully reflect on the meaning for your Christian journey and discipleship.
Bible Month is an annual campaign that celebrates Scripture by inviting the whole Methodist Connexion to feast on one particular book of the Bible together.
Split into 30 days of readings, with questions for reflection and space to make your own notes, the Daily Reading Guide equips and encourages you to read through the book of Revelation in a month.
To get more involved in Bible Month, visit methodist.org.uk/biblemonth.
Each Sunday during June there will be themed preaching and you also have the opportunity to join a Bible Study group at Margaret’s on Monday mornings.
Steer clear! That’s what Christians think about the Book of Revelation. After all, what is there to like? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? The Red Dragon? The bodies of the Two Witnesses lying dead for 3½ days? The Battle of Armageddon? Gog and Magog, whoever they are? The Great White Throne? The Lake of Fire?
No way! On the plus side, the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven looks pretty good, but that’s somewhere off in the future. Nothing to do with me here and now. Leave Revelation to the specialists!
In fact, Revelation has everything to do with how we live as Christians, and what is going on around us in the spirit world.
I recently saw a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the middle of this drama, the spirit world (represented by Oberon, Titania and other fairies) collides with the ‘real’ world of the central characters, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander. It dawned on me quite suddenly that the mortals had not the least awareness of the presence of the fairies and what they were up to, though we as the audience could see the whole thing.
So it is with us as Christians. We have our struggles and triumphs, our lives and our loves. We know that there is a spirit world, but we have only a limited understanding of its activity in our own lives or in the world around us.
The Book of Revelation – the very word Apocalypse means ‘unveiling’ – puts us in the stalls and invites us to view the whole drama of history. It’s a glorious panorama of the whole Church Age, from the resurrection right through to the end of all things. If Genesis is the seed-bed of the Bible, Revelation is the picture book, nothing added, nothing taken away.
Above all, it’s a book of hope:
Jesus Christ is central to the whole of history.
God’s in control.
He’s working His plan.
It can be painful at times in the here and now.
But God wins in the end, and if God wins, so do we. Even in the darkest moments – and some moments are very dark – God’s victory is never in doubt.
Enjoy Bible month and let me know what you have discovered about Revelation
love and prayers Revd Sara
