out of context

I grew up in a pentacostal community. We had a big white choir. We had church plays where Steve Moredyk was resurrected through the ceiling every easter, dressed in white and sporting his thickest beard. There were prophesies and baptisms and altar calls. I have been saved from hell and damnation more times than I can count and had whole books of the Bible memorized before I knew the periodic table of elements. Now don't take this description in a tone that would lead you to believe that I scoff at this community. Not at all. Not at all. As with all precious things, I find my experience is a mix of the divine and ...shit. Some of the deepest parts in me that are moved with compassion were kindled in those baby blue pews. 


 My intent though, reader, was to give you a frame of reference for how the word "testimony" strikes me. I hear those letters strung together and rolling off of someone's lips, and all of the sudden I am in the forth row of church, in the bank of pews to the left of center. The lights sunken into the vaulted ceiling are on full blaze. There are no shadows in the room, just varying degrees of bright. (The first time my sister walked into the newly built 5000 seat sanctuary, she whispered to my dad "church, the final frontier." This story circulated through the ranks of families and eventually leaked out from the pulpit in a sermon. Instant church-fame for my sister...it just wasn't fair) There is a man in a pressed suit standing front and center on the carpeted stage, holding a microphone at chin level. He is asking what Jesus has done in my life. He is asking for a testimony. 


 Snap out of it though. Come back to reality. You are not sitting next to me in church anymore. You have your iPhone in the palm of your hand. You are sitting at your desk in front of the computer. You are at home on the couch with a laptop. No one is asking what Jesus has done in your life. No one wants your testimony. 


" 10 Then I heard a loud voice shouting across the heavens,   
  
“It has come at last—
salvation and power and the Kingdom of our God,       
and the authority of his Christ.[a]    
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters[b]       
has been thrown down to earth—    
the one who accuses them       
before our God day and night.  
11 And they have overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.    
And they did not love their lives so much       
that they were afraid to die..." 


This is a quote from Revelation 12, and I am about to take it vastly out of context. 


 I have been struggling, absolutely wrestling with purpose and identity. I have a death grip around my own neck as I try fruitlessly to create a direction for my life. I have grown silent and drawn inward. I have run in circles in my own head. But this verse has sprouted up from the inside of me and grows even yet as I type. The blood of the Lamb speaks for itself...it is not my responsibility or obligation to make that work. I couldn't if I tried. What I have within me are words. Sometimes the words feel like they are in my blood stream, pumping along inside of me, tangling and twisting, tumbling over themselves and threatening to tear me up from within. Inside wants out. And they aren't always profound. They usually don't have "the Lord" strewn about in them. They are simple threads of what I see and hear every day. Weaving together to form what I know. They are my testimony.  




They overcame him 
by the blood of the Lamb 
and the word of their

testimony.