Desert, Torrent and Sea

Woven throughout the puzzling images of the Book of Revelation are the twin themes of victory and suffering.

Half-way through the book, in Chapter 12, John sees ‘a great and wondrous sign’ that illustrates this double truth.

A pregnant woman is on the verge of giving birth, but a fierce red dragon stands in front of her ready to pounce on her infant the moment she delivers. It’s a bizarre picture to be sure, but it's a symbolic portrait of the cosmic battle under-lying the history of the human race.

The woman is a composite of Eve, the mother of all living (who was stalked by the serpent) and Mary, the mother of Jesus, stalked by Herod after Jesus was born. The new-born boy-child, we’re told, “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” So we know this is about the reign of Jesus and the hostility of the evil one who seeks to destroy him. The child is no sooner born than he is “snatched up to God and to his throne” (v.5). The story leaps from the birth of Jesus to his ascension to heaven.

Landscape of Life

In the previous two posts, Water Cycle and Never Empty-Handed, we explored two wonders of the hydrologic cycle.

First is the wide array of effects that rain and snow have on the natural environment, both directly and multiplied through inter-action with other processes. The second is the parallel impact that God’s communiques have on the landscape of our hearts.

Like rain and snow, the Bible is designed by God to have a transforming effect on our lives.

Never Empty-handed

In my previous post we looked at the marvelous gift of rain and that showers down on the earth every hour of the day and night, achieving a vast array of benefits in the environment. It augments alpine and arctic snow-packs, refreshes rainforests and woodlands, nourishes meadows and grain-fields and then by returns by evapo-transpiration into the skies to do it all again.

It’s the original re-use and re-cycle process built into the universe.