December 5, 2024 - Revelation 2:1-7

Each year, at this point, I tend to take the letters to the churches individually, and I think I’ll do that again, this year. The Lord first speaks to the church in Ephesus.  He has both a commendation and a warning followed by another commendation.  The church has put up with much, very much like those to whom Peter wrote whom were kept by God’s power, and “In this you rejoiced (so Peter writes), though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith--more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).  It is such a marvelous display of faith when a people trust God even when being persecuted.  And it is good when a people hate the evil works as demonstrated in the Ephesians’ hatred of evil.  None of us are perfect, however, and the Ephesians seem to have grown lukewarm in their love, perhaps toward God and one another.  All this is a good reminder for us, today, to examine our lives and determine the ways in which we are faithful and those in which we are not.  Those who do so will “ eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (2:7)!

O Paradise, O Paradise,

Who doth not crave for rest?

Who would not seek the happy land

Where they that loved are blest.

Lord Jesus, King of Paradise,

O keep us in thy love,

And guide us to that happy land

Of perfect rest above.

Where loyal hearts and true

Stand ever in the light,

All rapture, through and through,

In God's most holy sight.   --Frederick W. Faber (1862)