Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, you whose eyes are like a flame of
fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze, you who searches the mind and the
heart, may we always hold fast to your ways and your standards, and never let
the culture around us determine what we will do or how we will think. Let our thoughts and our deeds, Lord Jesus,
always be determined by you and you alone.
In your name. Amen.
Scripture: Revelation 2:18-29
Journal: How are you like the church at Thyatira? What does the vision of Jesus as having “eyes
like a flame of fire” and “feet like burnished bronze” do within you? How does the message to the church at
Thyatira speak to your life right now?
Are there things I tolerate in myself that cause God great
sadness?
Reflection:
Being tolerant is generally thought of as a
positive virtue in this day and age. And
in terms of being loving, caring, and accepting of those around us, that would
seem to be a good and right thing. After
all, didn’t Jesus eat with tax gatherers and sinners? Wasn’t it Jesus who said, “It is not the
healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew
9:12-13) Jesus seemed very at home with,
and embracing of, people from all walks of life, people who were lost in an
abundance of ways. So we too, as his
people, should always have a loving openness to people in this broken and
hurting world.
But here in the letter to the church at
Thyatira there is a different kind of tolerance that Jesus gives a pretty
strong warning against. It seems that
the people of this church were subtly being seduced into thinking that certain
practices were okay, when the truth of the matter was that these very practices,
ones they thought would have little to no impact on them individually or
corporately, would actually impact them significantly—over time.
Thus, the message of Jesus to the church
at Thyatira seems pretty simple, “Watch out what you tolerate, because, in
the end, it can lead you miles away from your desired destination.” Oh it might not seem like a big deal at
first. In fact, it could be a very
subtle thing, only one or two degrees different from the intended course. The problem is that one or two degrees
difference, over time, amounts to a pretty significant difference in the long
run. In fact, it is an easy way to get lost. And Jesus doesn’t want us lost, he wants us
home. Therefore, he warns the church—not
just the one at Thyatira, but of every time and every place—what an enormous
impact tolerating a few things can have on our lives.
Prayers
Closing Prayer: Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with
ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when
we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of
things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen
in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to
build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim. Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture
on wilder seas where storms will show Your mastery; where losing sight of land,
we shall find the stars. We ask you to
push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push back the future in strength,
courage, hope, and love. This we ask in
the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ. ~Sir Francis Drake
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