December 11 - Revelation 9: Getting to the Center

God's wrath is pouring out.  His judgment is spreading through the earth.  It is difficult and terrible to read these chapters.  I know that God's holiness requires nothing less than holiness (1 Peter 1:15, 16).  I know that Christ is the only righteous judge (Psalm 96:10, 13).  Yet somehow, when graphically described, the doom, torture, and destruction that holiness and righteousness require seem too much, too harsh.

In the wake of this terror, the remaining people were not terrorized.  They saw what was happening, yet they were unaffected.  They "went on their merry way - didn't change their way of life... didn't quit centering their lives around lumps of gold and silver and brass, hunks of stone and wood that couldn't see or hear or move.  There wasn't a sign of a change of heart"  (v. 20-21).   This response seems illogical and unfathomable.

However, as I think about the last verses of this chapter, the Spirit is asking me where is my center?  In the midst of much sorrow and terror in the world, in the midst of difficulties within my own little world, what am I wrapping my life around?   Or, another way to phrase it is to say, "For me, to live is_______________."   What will I fill the blank with?  That will tell me a lot about who I'm placing at the center of my life.