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Reflection:

Revelation is a costly conversation.

I presume that most of us would invite a Divine annunciation. To have some other worldly non-human Being deliver a message from the Almighty sounds amazing! And a story that you would tell over and over again. It would be THE thing that people ask you to tell at gatherings. Would you get bored of it around the 183rd consecutive time telling it at a dinner party?

But the thing about the Revelation received in the annunciation by a heavenly messanger is that all that you had going, and all that you had planned, is over. 

Everything will change... most of all you. 

And maybe that is a welcomed change. Maybe you are reading this and thinking "God I could use a change"... and maybe you are ready for such a transformation. 

But the rub of Revelation is it's a transformation that you're not in charge of. 

We all have areas that we would love transformation. Me - a never ending daddy tummy, a proclivity to melancholy, an inability to enjoy the last Star Wars films (sorry JJ, I tried!). But it seems that Revelation doesn't transform the places you want to transform. It transforms all the things you dreamed and planned for  - your best case scenario.

How your life would be. 

Who you'd marry. 

What your wedding would be like. 

Your first kids name. 

How people think about you and your family in the community you live in. 

How your kids lives will turn out. 

Your best laid plans.

Revelation is a hard gift to receive. It's because you must give everything else up to receive it. Like finding a treasure in a field and selling everything you have so you can get that treasure. 

But then again... she who is willing to receive the cost of Revelation finds themselves in the deepest of stories. Stories that are so mysterious, Divine, and human... that we still tell them today.

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* this meditation is an excerpt from the book Honest Advent.