Cosmos Reborn

"God never gives us an explanation of evil---he only gives us the answer to it"  -  John Crowder

The whole universe cries out for the sons and daughters of God to be one with God and her (the universe).  This fully happens in the new heaven and new earth but its a call to every creature to recognize they are God's new creation.  The dream we have forgotten is God's love for the entire cosmos fulfilled in Christ.  The mystery revealed is the whole cosmos being reborn into the image of the son who is the prefect reflection of God the Father.

The mystic secret is a person discovered in God's son Jesus Christ.  The journey is not found in self books but in the person of Jesus Christ who calls us back to our primal true self.  When we read the scriptures, he is the lens where we see everything.  Without Christ centered eyes, we turn the Bible into an idol or rigid rules that end up enslaving us rather than liberating us.  When I read Leviticus, I no longer see a long list of legalistic rules that I am to uphold but rather pointing to Christ and his finished work on the cross.  Christ is the lens which I read everything now.

I am preaching through the whole counsel of God and that also means the book of Revelation.  Most people will preach through about the first three or five chapters and stop there.  Why?  Because the book becomes very dense with the seals, trumpets, four apocalyptic horsemen, bowls of judgment and the like.  These are not scary texts to appease an angry God or a violent God who wants to wipe humanity off the face of the earth.  In the most difficult and traumatic texts of the Bible, is God's wrath not trying to destroy me but is always against my sinfulness that is destroying myself.  The cross does not satisfy God's anger but his love.  It is God's love that extends to everything, even the hardest and most troubling of circumstances.