Today I’ve turned my attention to the book of Revelation. It’s far from being my favourite Biblical text. I generally find it an uphill struggle. Yet even as I wrestle with it I have to admit that it contains some hidden gems that offer me hope and inspiration. I’m reflecting on this from yesterdays’ Office of Readings:
“On each side of the river there was a tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once every month; and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.”
These words carry a promise and a hope that is desperately needed today. Our world is deeply broken and fractured disputes and conflicts. The resulting violence has huge costs for ordinary people, destroying lives and communities, undermining human dignity and efforts to flourish and grow. It’s hard to imagine a time that needs the healing the text offers more than our own.
It can be tempting to assume that the writer of Revelation wrote these words of hope at time when life was, calm, peaceful and straightforward for his community. That’s not the case. He was writing to a community facing great suffering and persecution. In such times he could encourage his community to find hope in the promise of the risen Christ however desperate their circumstances were.
This adds a new layer of hope to his words. However broken and fractured our world is, and whatever we face as a result his words offer us hope. They promise that the risen Christ is there offering our fractured nations hope and healing.
Where do you see signs of the hope and healing the risen Christ is offering us this Eastertide?