***Mild Spoiler Alert***
Read with caution if you've never seen the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan movie The Sixth Sense.
These past several weeks we've looked at "big moments" in the Old Testament where God encountered people: Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah. These, all in their own way, showed them something about the nature of God, who God is, and how they can get in on the act of what God is doing. We looked back at these stories to find this.
This week, we'll do something risky. We'll look forward. We'll dive into the scene in St. John's Revelation and see, as it were, a throne room. We'll get that full picture of the future, pulling back the curtain on the way things really are.
But why look forward?
Because when you see the end, the way things really are, it changes the now. You begin to live into that odd overlap of what you know to be true. Think of the difference between the first time you saw the Sixth Sense and every subsequent time…
Knowing what you know about Bruce Willis' character by the end of the movie, there is no way you can ever watch the movie the same way again. What surprised you, what held you in suspense, what puzzled you, what threw you through a loop, has dissolved because you know the ending. Instead of being distracted by all of that, you find that your movie-watching senses become more keen. You notice the red door knobs, the temperature changes in the room, and dialogue cues.
As we close our series on Big Moments, encounters with the living God, my hope is that our peek into the throne room in Revelation 4 will set a scene for our worship that we can't forget, can't pretend we haven't seen, and wouldn't want to even if we could.