Yesterday, during the opening collect at Mass, lights began
to fade in the church. Before the end of
the first reading, the altar was only lit by candlelight. (This was a power loss scheduled by the power
company to replace a pole, so it wasn’t a complete surprise.) The silence
seemed more pronounced during mass. The candle light was soft and fluid and the
pace more leisurely. I’m sure it was in
my imagination, but it gave a different perspective to praising and worshiping
God.
Coincidentally,
or not, a quote from the daily reading from Revelation 21 stood out for
me. It said, “The city has no need of
sun or moon, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The
nations shall walk by it light; to it the kings of the earth shall bring its
treasurers. During the day the gates
shall not be shut and there will be no night.”
And the
reading for this Sunday is also from Revelation and references light in
heaven. Also in Revelation 21:22-23 is
says, “I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God almighty and
the Lamb. The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of
God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb.”
These
readings made me think of the 6th grade religious education class
that I substitute taught a few weeks ago.
In an attempt to help them think about heaven as a real place, I asked
them to draw a picture of what they think heaven will be like. The results were interesting. One drew a hotel, another had a place for
fishing, and one girl can’t imagine heaven with Chipotle. We
talked about the idea that there will not be any hate or fear in heaven. “But what about baseball?” asked one young man. Will
we need to sleep or eat? All of this, we did not know.
What I do know, from the two
passages in Revelations is that there will not be a sun or moon or a
night. The light will come from the
glory of God. And yet in the church yesterday, it was the lack of artificial light that helped me feel closer to the one who has all the glory!
No comments:
Post a Comment