December 10 - Revelation 8: Complete Silence

I remember asking the question as a new Christian, "If God knows everything anyway, why do I have to pray?" The thought never occurred to me that God actually may want to hear my heart. I saw it more as an exchange of information that God already knew, not as a way to develop intimacy in my relationship with my Father.

On some level, I still struggle with prayer today, wondering if I'm boring God with too many details. Is He tired of hearing my voice, of my same old sin struggles?

Gratefully, Revelation 8 shatters that line of thinking.

When the Lamb ripped off the seventh seal, Heaven fell quiet - complete silence for about half an hour...[Another Angel] was given a great quantity of incense so that he could offer up the prayers of all the holy people of God on the Golden Altar before the Throne. Smoke billowed up from the incense-laced prayers of the holy ones, rose before God from the hand of the Angel. (8:1, 3-4)

In fact, God cares. He listens. He values the prayers of His people. And as we see in the rest of chapter 8, God acts on them.

"The book of Revelation is a fusion of vision and prayer. When the seventh seal is opened, there is silence in heaven for about a half an hour. A climax has been reached. The silence prepares the imagination to receive an incredible truth. While conflicts raged between good and evil, prayers went up from devout bands of first-century Christians all over the Roman Empire. Massive siege engines of persecution raged against them. They had neither weapons nor votes. They had little money and no prestige. 

"So why didn't they have mental breakdowns? Why didn't they cut and run? Because they prayed. 

"It was in order to hear those prayers that there was silence in heaven. Out of the silence, action developed: An angel came before the altar of God with a censer. He mixed the prayers of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God's Spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in the censer and threw it over heaven's rampart. The censer, plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were "thunders, voices, lightening, and an earthquake. (verse 5). The prayers that had ascended, unnoted by the journalists of the day, returned with immense force - in George Herbert's phrase, as a "reversed thunder." Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. 

"Our world is shaken daily by it. 

"And so are the smaller worlds that are yours and mine." Eugene Peterson, Conversations, pg. 1961

John's vision helps me cling to the truth that talking with God matters, immensely. My Father values my thoughts and wants to hear my concerns, my thanks, my failures, my desires. He wants to hear everything. And He'll even quiet all of heaven to hear my prayers.

Truly astounding.