Feeling Small?
Yes and No
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And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:8)
It is easy to feel small, as in insignificant. Measured against the cosmos, or history, or the prairies, mountains and oceans — and measured by our limited impact on our world most days — we’re pretty dinky.
Revelation 5 shows that those who are in Christ, tiny though we are, are part of his cosmic majesty. Even now, when we pray and worship (you know, the stuff deemed “non-essential”), we are not lost in the universe, we are helping to sustain and complete it.
In his vision, John sees God holding a scroll, and laments that there is no creature worthy to unseal this divine proclamation.
Suddenly, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of Jesse, the Lamb who was slain —Jesus Christ — stands as the mediator between the Creator and the creation. He is worthy to unseal the scroll.
But that action is left until the next chapter. Chapter 5 turns into an outpouring of praise, as Christ is worshipped by
Four living creatures, in Church tradition representative of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Gospel writers by which the words and deeds of Jesus are conveyed across time and place;
Twenty-four elders, representing the twelve tribes of the Old Covenant and the 12 Apostles of the New (all of God’s people);
Myriads and thousands of thousands of angels, heavenly beings;
Every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, the whole creation of which we are a part.
That list can make us feel tinier at first blush, but in the middle of it all John reports that the elders and creatures are offering golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. That is to say, OUR prayers, because the New Testament describes all of God’s people as the saints.
When we pray, we are participating is a divinely inspired movement of the universe. Christmas is almost here, when we’ll acknowledge it in song, as heaven and nature sing the joy of Christ’s arrival.
Yes, we are puny things on our own. Even our “influencers” and those who seem great,
Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him. For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed—and though you get praise when you do well for yourself—his soul will go to the generation of his fathers, who will never again see light. Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish. (Psalm 49:16-20)
But we who are children of the Father, through the mediation of the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, are voices in an eternal choir of praise filling the cosmos. Not small at all when we pray and worship.