The Wedding Invitation- Lent 32, 2022

It’s nice to receive a wedding announcement, and even better, a wedding invitation.

Revelation 19:7 Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. 8 Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.)

It’s also nice to be told the meaning of things since we’re trying to read the actual lines (not between them) in the Book of Revelation in 40 vignettes. So much has been obscure and speculation up to this point in Revelation and sometimes it’s really hard to simply read the lines and let them speak to us. That’s why little parenthetical statements, explaining the meaning, are refreshing.

Revelation 19:9 Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”

Uh, is there another kind? Of course not! They’re all true! Sometimes it’s just good to have a clear, powerful reminder that we’re dealing with truth—God’s true words—in an age where everything has been hammered into us 24/7 that truth is relative. (But it’s not.)

Thoughts for today:

It can be easy to confuse the messenger with the message. John, overwhelmed by what he was seeing and having been told that these are the true words of God, impulsively followed his instinct and not his faith.

Revelation 19: 10 At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”

Read that verse 10 again, mediating on what each clause means.

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Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.