Thoughts - August 22 - Revelation 21:6

I'm going to call these "Thoughts", at least for now. I'm not sure I'm quite up to writing "Devotions" yet. And, hey, if I am, the little extra dose of humility might not be a bad thing either...


"And He said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." (Rev. 21:6)


I was surprised reading over some of what I've written over the past few months how much I've focused on change. The more I consider it, the more I find that change is very interesting, because it's a continuing process: each end always holds a new beginning, and each new beginning bears the seeds of an end. The cycle self-perpetuates, and the only way to attempt to avoid it is to stretch out the period of time between beginnings and ends. Some try to do this by never beginning anything at all, and, while I suppose this may work, it seems like a miserable way to live. Others grasp the now for all it's worth, trying desperately to keep pushing the end off. This is, unfortunately, a losing battle. So what are we to do?

It's in that spirit that I've considered this rather well-known passage from Revelation. It's an awe-inspiring statement, signaling the end of Earth and Heaven as we know them, and the inauguration of our eternity with Christ. But I want to pull out a couple of details.

First, He is. It doesn't read 'I was the Alpha and will be the Omega.' It says "I am"! It echoes Christ's "Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58) To Him, the beginning and the end are both in the present - "I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done," (Isaiah 46:9-10)

Second, He's not an end, or a beginning - He's THE beginning and end. There's no beginning before Him, and no ending after Him. And, since to Him both exist at once, all the individual beginnings and ends converge towards those two poles, that are both Him.

Now, any RPI-type person who reads this will realize the implication quickly. By the Squeeze Theorem, if the beginnings and the ends each converge to God, then those things between them, which would include all events, must also converge to Him. In other words, "From Him and through Him and to Him are all things," (Rom. 11:36), including the events of our lives. Whether in the hard turning points of change or in the smoother times in between, we are always near to God.

If this is, then the case, then in whatever happens, we have a promise to live on. For the One who declares His omnipresence, in His very next statement, invites us to drink in the fullness of life with Him: "To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." The promise is not only real - it's the gateway to all that God has in store for us!