“And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it… but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled…” – Revelation 12:4-6
A homeschooling mom gave me a great tip: pay attention to what your child reads just like you would be aware of what they eat. “Candy” books are fine, but they shouldn’t comprise their entire diet. One thing she does is pick a “stretch” book, one a bit beyond her kids’ reading level. They snuggle together on the couch, and she reads it aloud to them, occasionally having them read a paragraph to her as well.
The book we picked to read with our older kids is Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Revisiting Middle Earth reminds me of how so many of these stories are gripping because they function on two levels: an epic one, and an ordinary one. There is Frodo stealing mushrooms and men battling for thrones on one level, but then the secret quest to destroy the ring on the other. In Star Wars, there are battles against the Empire and Han’s escapades on one level, but then the mission of the Jedi to defeat the dark side on the other. In Ender’s Game, there are battle-school games on one level, but then the confrontation between humanity and the buggers on the other. In the Stormlight Archives, there are politics and wars on one level, but then the rediscovery of magic to fight a looming threat on the other.
The ordinary stories are what makes the characters human and relatable: but it is the epic storyline that determines whether any of them, or their world, will survive. Reading Revelation is a bit like stepping into one of these stories. On one hand, you have John, an older guy stuck in a cave on a rocky island writing his last letter. On the other hand, you have the visions he records, which are like God pulling back a curtain to reveal epic tableaus that are no less real for being less seen.
This particular vision is of a woman with a crown of twelve stars; she is thought to represent the Israelites (12 tribes, Micah 4:10) or the church (12 apostles). She gives birth to a child holding an iron scepter, thought to represent Jesus (Psalm 2:9). But as the child is about to be born, there waits for him a red dragon, the color of blood and war, with seven heads symbolizing complete evil, bearing seven crowns like a counterfeit king (Revelation 19:12,16). Later we are told the great dragon is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9). Like other epic stories, this plot involves a battle against good and evil—only it is entirely true.
We exist on both levels, the ordinary and the epic, the visible and the invisible, and to miss one is to not fully understand how to live in the other. As the authors of a BSF study wrote, “Satan has waged a cosmic war against God, and our daily lives are nothing less than the battleground. That is the context of our human existence.”
Satan and his forces are not necessarily behind everything that happens to us. But neither should we make the mistake of thinking he is not very much at work in our daily lives. The battles that we fight every day are significant precisely because they occur within the context of a much larger one, and we would do well to remember that.
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