Who is worthy?And through them walks a Lamb.

I saw, in the right hand of him who sat on the throne, a book written inside and outside, sealed shut with seven seals. It is the one thing in heaven nobody is looking away from: a thick, ancient scroll, held up in a swell of the light itself, its writing crowded right to the edges — and sealed along its binding by seven small fires. Everything the story still has to say is in there, and it is shut. Revelation 5 : 1

I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the book, and to break its seals?" It is asked properly — a herald the size of a tower, planted between the throne and every rank in heaven, and a question that leaves him as a ring of light travelling outward. Not who wants to. Not who is strong enough. Who is worthy. Revelation 5 : 2

No one in heaven above, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book. The question goes out and keeps going — past the pillars, across the star-fields, down over a small blue world turning in the dark — and then it thins out and stops, and nothing anywhere answers it. Back in the throne room the elders lower their heads one by one. Heaven has run out of candidates. Revelation 5 : 3

And I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open the book. Of everything John has been shown, this is what breaks him. He looks from the silent elders to the silent creatures to the scroll nobody can open, and folds forward over his knees with his face in his big ink-stained hands. It is not one grief. It is all of them at once: every promise that might stay sealed forever. Revelation 5 : 4

One of the elders said to me, "Don't weep. Behold, the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome." A hand lands on the old man's shoulder, and the kindest face in the circle bends down to his level with the best news in the universe and takes its time handing it over. Do not cry. Look. Revelation 5 : 5

He hears Lion, and his whole body gets ready for one. He wipes his eyes hard, grips the Elder's arm and turns — braced for a mane of fire filling the sky, for a roar to end the silence, for the most powerful thing in heaven. The ranks of kings draw aside like curtains. An aisle opens all the way to the throne. And the pause goes on a little longer than it should. Revelation 5 : 5

I saw in the middle of the throne a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. The Lion of Judah arrives lamb-sized. Small, white, walking unhurried down an aisle built for armies, its hooves chiming faintly on the glass, carrying the healed marks of what it once gave. And every ancient king in that circle bows — not to size, but to worth. On John's face the braced awe collapses into something far bigger: recognition. Of course. Revelation 5 : 6

Then he came, and he took it out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. It does not slow at the foot of the throne. It climbs — step of light by step of light, into a brightness no created thing could enter — and the light bows around it instead of burning it. Then the swell of radiance holding the scroll lowers, gently, and the scroll comes to rest against a small white shoulder. A coronation with no crown in it: authority, passing to gentleness. Revelation 5 : 7

The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. The silence detonates. Everything that can kneel kneels, and in every pair of hands there is suddenly a harp and a golden bowl — and from the bowls, threads of shining smoke climb and braid together as they go. Watch the bowls. What is in them is the point of the whole scene. Revelation 5 : 8

This is the loveliest idea in the whole book, and it is worth going slowly over. Inside the smoke of each bowl there is a picture. In one, a mother kneels at a sick child's bed, and her whisper rises off her lips as a thread of gold that goes up through her ceiling and arrives here. In another, a prisoner's folded hands, chained — and the same gold thread climbing out through the window-slit, which iron cannot hold. And in the third, a grey headland John knows very well, and a small figure kneeling on it in the wind. His own prayers. Kept here. In gold. At the centre of everything. His hand rises toward the smoke — and stops. Not daring. Not needing. Revelation 5 : 8

They sang a new song… "You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals." Heaven has been singing since before the mountains, and this song is new — nobody in the room has ever had cause to sing it before. The elders draw across their strings, the creatures come in underneath, and then the angels arrive from every horizon at once, ten thousand times ten thousand of them, turning in circle beyond circle like a galaxy — around a lamb. Revelation 5 : 9, 11–12

I heard every created thing which is in heaven, on the earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them, saying, "To him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion, forever and ever!" The song spills over heaven's edge and falls on the world like rain, and the world answers in the only ways it has. Whales come up out of a moonlit sea in towers of spray. Deer lift their heads in a dark glade. Whole fields of wheat stand up on end. And in a lamplit doorway a baby laughs at a sky full of music that none of the grown-ups can hear, and reaches for it. Revelation 5 : 13

I saw the Lamb open one of the seven seals. The first seal starts to glow against the scroll — brighter, then hotter, a small sun coming to a boil — while the Lamb stands underneath it perfectly calm and simply waits. Cracks of brilliance craze across its face. The scroll creaks like a ship's timber. And then it lets go, and the thunder of it rolls out in rings across the crystal sea, and every head in heaven turns. History's first lock has just come off, and there is no putting it back. Revelation 6 : 1