And once the beast within has been loved back into the lamb it always was, there is nothing left in us that needs to be afraid — and so we are taken up. A door stands open in heaven, and a voice like a trumpet says the kindest thing it could possibly say: come up here, and see. Not stay back. Not you are not allowed. Come up. Come and see.
At the center of everything there is a throne, and Someone seated on it — and it is not the cold and distant king that fear always imagined. It is the Father, at the heart of his family, with the Mother beside him, the source from which the whole vast household flows. And here is the first thing you notice, the thing that tells you you are safe: around the throne, encircling all that power, there is a rainbow. The very same rainbow that arched over Noah's flood — the old promise, never again, never destruction, never abandonment — is wrapped around the seat of all authority like a ring around a finger. Mercy does not stand off to the side of God's power. Mercy is the circle that surrounds it. Every bit of power that flows from that throne flows out through the promise first.
Around the throne sit twenty-four elders, robed in white, with crowns of gold — the children who remembered, grown all the way up into the kings and queens they were always meant to become. And watch what they do with their crowns. They take them off, and they lay them down before the throne. Not because they are forced to. Not because they are small. Because they are so full of love that the crown in their hands becomes a thing they want to give back. This is the exact opposite of the beast, who clawed and killed to be worshipped and could never get enough. These ones were freely crowned, and they freely give the glory back, and in the giving they lose nothing at all — that is how love works at the center of things.
And around the throne are living creatures, full of eyes, seeing everything — one like a lion, one like an ox, one like an eagle, one like a person — all of creation, wild and tame and soaring and human, fully awake at last, and singing. They never stop, and they never tire, because their song is not labor; it is the rest that comes after remembering. Holy, holy, holy, they sing, the One who was, and is, and is coming. All of creation, awake and aware and adoring, every eye finally open.
But then the vision turns to the one thing in all of heaven that brings sorrow. In the right hand of the One on the throne there is a scroll — and on that scroll is written everything. The whole word. The whole story. The meaning of all of it, front and back, nothing left out. And it is sealed shut. Seven seals, sealed tight, and no one can open it. A mighty voice cries through all the worlds: Who is worthy to open the scroll? Who can break the seals and read what is written? And no one answers. No one in heaven, no one on earth, no one anywhere is able to open it, or even to look inside.
And John weeps. He weeps hard. And his weeping is our weeping — the grief of the whole human family that the meaning is sealed, that the word is shut, that we have stood outside the locked book of our own story for so long, unable to read who we are. If you have ever ached to understand and found the door closed, that is this moment. That is the sealed scroll.
Then one of the elders touches him and says: Do not weep. Look — the Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed. He can open it. And John lifts his eyes to see the Lion —
and there is no Lion. There is a Lamb. A Lamb standing as though it had been slain, still bearing its wound.
This is the secret at the very heart of heaven, the thing that unseals everything. The power that opens the sealed word is not the lion of conquest. It never was. We kept looking for the strong one, the mighty one, the one who could force the locks — and the lock turns out to open only to the Lamb. Only to the one who surrendered. Only to love poured all the way out. The wound is the key. The very thing the beast could never do — let go, lay down, be slain, surrender — is the one thing that fits the lock. The word does not open to force. It opens to love. That is why it stayed sealed so long, and that is why it can be opened now: not by getting stronger, but by getting gentler; not by conquering the word, but by coming to it the way the Lamb came to everything — emptied, open, undefended, in love.
And the Lamb takes the scroll, and all of heaven erupts. The elders fall down with harps, and with golden bowls full of incense — and the incense, the vision tells us, is the prayers of God's people. So every prayer ever whispered up from the earth, in every age and every tongue, arrives here, gathered, at the throne, as sweet smoke before the face of God. The prayer from below and the throne above are in the same room at last. And they sing a new song to the Lamb: You are worthy to open it, because you were slain, and you gathered us to God out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and you made us — all of us — kings and priests, and we will reign on the earth. Worthy because slain. Worthy because he gathered everyone. Worthy because he crowned everyone. The opening of the word and the gathering of the whole family turn out to be the same act.
Here is the pairing the throne teaches, the eleventh balance of God: glory and woundedness, held together. We imagined that when we finally saw God in his glory, every wound would be wiped away and forgotten. But the One at the center of all glory is a Lamb still bearing the mark of his slaying — and the wound is not his shame, it is his crown. It is the very reason all of heaven calls him worthy. This is one of the deepest balances of all: the highest throne and the deepest wound, held in one person, so that we finally understand that what we suffered will not be erased when we come home — it will be honored. Our wounds, like his, become the place the light gets in and the proof of how much we loved. Glory without woundedness is a stranger to us. Woundedness without glory is despair. But the two held together — the slain Lamb on the throne of everything — that is the heart of God, and it is the eleventh facet of charity. There is one facet still to come — and it will not be shown to us on a throne in heaven, but far below, on the earth, when the whole family is gathered at last into one. It waits for us at the end.
Then every creature everywhere — in heaven, on the earth, under the earth, in the sea, all of them, all at once — lifts its voice together: Blessing and honor and glory to the One on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever. The whole of creation, singing as one.
And the Lamb lifts the first seal. The word is about to open. The story we have stood outside of for so long is about to be read aloud, in plain words, at last — and we are inside the room to hear it.