The Man Made of Morning

The old man who had written "There is no fear in love" had been sent away to an island. John was on rocky Patmos because he would not stop preaching God's word and telling people about Jesus. His brother James had been killed for Jesus long ago. Across the sea, the churches John loved were suffering too. He called himself their brother in the suffering and in the kingdom, because Jesus' kingdom had already begun, and it reached all the way out to Patmos.

One Sunday, the Lord's Day, John was worshiping when the Spirit of God came over him. Behind him a voice rang out, loud as a trumpet.

"Write on a scroll what you see," it said, "and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea."

John turned around to see who was speaking. (The Bible says he turned "to see the voice." Voices are hard to see, but John saw plenty.)

He saw seven golden lampstands, all burning, and standing among them someone like a son of man. (That is an old Bible way of saying he looked like a person. Jesus had often called himself the Son of Man.) His robe reached to his feet, and a gold sash crossed his chest. His hair was white like wool, as white as snow. His eyes blazed like fire. His feet glowed like bronze in a furnace, orange-hot as a blacksmith's iron. His voice roared like rushing water, the way a waterfall roars when you stand right underneath it. In his right hand he held seven stars. Out of his mouth came a sharp sword with two edges. And his face shone like the sun at noon, when no one can look straight at it.

John fell at his feet as if he were dead.

Then the shining one reached down and laid his right hand on him, the same hand that held the stars.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One. I was dead, and look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and of the place of the dead."

John knew who had been dead. More than sixty years before, he had stood beside a cross and watched his teacher die. Then, early on a Sunday morning, he had raced Peter to the empty tomb. (John won. He made sure to put that in his book.)

John had lain on the rock like a dead man, but he was only frightened. He was old, though, and one day he would really die, the way his brother had. To most people, death looks like a locked door that no one can open.

But the keys were in the hand on John's shoulder. Later the shining one told John what the lampstands were: his churches. He was walking among them, every lamp in every city, every frightened believer, and he sent John to tell them so. He was the friend who had once cooked John breakfast on a beach at sunrise. Now his face outshone the sun, and when an old man fell down afraid, he bent down and touched him.

It was Jesus. His face was too bright to look at, but his hand was gentle, and the keys were in it.