Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

 

The words sometimes seems so dismal. Often I hear people talk about the end of days and how they feel like the time is near. I just started a devotional class at church on revelations. It was really an introduction class this past Sunday, but this Sunday is when we are going to be digging into the material. I have read parts of revelations when I was younger but I am going to be honest that I often don’t read many passages in the book. Mostly because in the past I only viewed it as something that scared me, however when we were discussing it on Sunday it was brought to my attention that many people view the book as a source of hope. Knowing that the plan God has for the end overpowers any evil that may be in this world. That he has a plan much bigger than we can often understand.

The prediction of Jesus must have been like this for the Jews, a prophecy of hope of what was to come. The accession of the true church to make the nations and kings come to the light. It makes me excited to begin this study into something that used to scare me as a child. As i have grown not only in my physical self but also spiritual self, I know that the truth that fear is nothing to fear because everything that was has been overcome by the love of the blood.

I was born to two parents who loved me, but only one of them knew what the love of God meant. My mother brought us to church every Sunday from the time I was born, but my father did not believe back then. Instead he tried to escape the pain and hurt by taking drugs. My father had his troubles and I will never really know exactly because I was so young, and the things that a child knows and remembers is different than an adult. I only remember that he was often angry, angry at my mom or me or even my two year old brother. I remember what it felt like when you found your daddy passed out on the couch,and he wouldn’t wake up. So you just sat watching TV until your mom got home.  Yet, as I child you only think he is sick, which as an adult you know is true because addiction is an illness. The thing that moves me to tears is the fact that at the end of my father’s life after not speaking to him for fifteen years…..I found a changed man who had been brought into the light of God’s love for him. And as he slowly died from the cancer that had spread throughout his body, he found peace. I know that the eyes of a person who has the peace of God of their death bed is different than a person who has never known. There is a gratefulness that exists. The testament that often inspires those I share this with is that my mother prayed for my father everyday, even though they were divorced…..even though non of us had spoken to him in years. She prayed that one day he would come to know the Lord. As I spoke to him before his passing, I learned that yes her prayers had come to be answered. And so i know in my heart that God reaches down to each one of us and opens the door so that we as part of the nation can be brought to the light. Even so we come to this light by the love of Jesus Christ. The one who died so that we could know a peace unlike any other. I miss my father and miss that I never got to know the man he became after he came to know God. Yet, I know that one day I too will come to my end with the same peace and gratitude that he had before his death. Yes Jesus Loves me for the Bible tells me so. Jesus has brought me to the light that shines on all nations, as it is God’s great plan that each one of us know him.