God is encouraging us to keep the lights on, keep our hearts expectant and waiting for Christ's return, and be faithful witnesses for Jesus while we are waiting.

As a believer in Jesus, we can accept that there truly is a 'happily ever after' promised to us. The Church is described as a beautiful bride, the Bride of Christ. This reference to the church as the Bride is also embedded in the Apostle Paul's household code in the letter to the church at Ephesus. It's like inserting the 'happily ever after' naivety into the very stark reality of every-day life.

The church of Jesus Christ is not a momentary entertainment or fly-by-night show. All of us together are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit lives within us.  We must be diligent not to build a facade of spirituality, but to allow the master builder to help us renovate spaces in our lives, take the old wood out to the trash pile, and build back better with gold, silver and jewels.

God is our creator; you are fearfully and wonderfully made.  You are beautiful, you are designed by God, and he does not want you imprisoned by a false lie about body image, but instead to be free to love and be loved. And in the church, each person is important and matters in God's design.

Jesus is building his church upon the rock.  That rock is the revelation of Jesus.  But the 'road' part is coming to understand how that revelation has been received and carried forward by the Apostles and the early church, and grounding our identity as a church in that foundation.

How do we flourish in this life according to God's vision for us? It happens in community - both here within our church family and then moving out from here into our larger community.

This is not the end! Death does not have the final say! Our struggles and trials, pains and sorrows, doubts and fears, persecutions and rejections, loneliness and awkwardness, disappointments and discouragements - none of these things are the end. We have a future hope and it is dazzling, it is joyful, it is powerful, it is eternal.

The message of the Book of Revelation is not to make us afraid of secret numbers or accidental tattoos.  It is giving us the invitation and the opportunity to see beyond the outer layer of things, to understand there is a cosmic battle and to encourage us to take our stand with Jesus.

Viewed through the Exodus narrative, the reader asks: Where am I? What choices do I have here? What is God going to do about my situation? God is not absent or asleep at the wheel - he is in control of this age and the age to come, and we can wholeheartedly put our confidence in God.

This imagery is not just a momentary escape from ’the real world’ - rather it is a blessed glimpse through the veil to the current and eternal reality of Christ’s Lordship, his authority, his glory. He has the church in his hands. He has the future in his hands. He has the victory, and even through suffering and difficulty and struggle and pain - He is Lord!