There’s a verse in Revelation I keep coming back to this week, a vision of heaven that doesn’t open with silence or a single throne. It opens with a crowd. A great multitude that no one could number, John writes, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing together and crying out one thing in common.

I don’t picture myself as part of that crowd very often. Most days I’m just getting through the ordinary weight of things, and the saints feel like a separate category of person, far ahead and out of sight. But this week’s reading has kept pulling me back to the same thought: that crowd isn’t somewhere I’m trying to reach someday. It’s already around me now, further along the same road, praying for me whether I notice or not.

So today, instead of a task, just a question worth sitting with. If that whole crowd is really there, not cheering anyone on in particular but everybody who’s still walking, who in it would I actually want to ask by name? Not as a trivia exercise. As a start.

Today’s Bible Study

Peter tells the early Christians something that sounds almost too large to apply to them: that they are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who belong to God, called out of darkness into a light that’s actually marvelous. He isn’t describing some future honor reserved for a few remarkable men and women. He’s describing who they already are, and he’s writing to people who were mostly fishermen, servants, and converts with no standing at all. The great crowd in Revelation isn’t a different category of person than the one Peter is writing to, or the one reading this now.

Recommended Reading

If that crowd feels too abstract to actually pray with, the Church already gives you a way to call out their names one by one: the Litany of the Saints, prayed for centuries at baptisms, ordinations, and plenty of ordinary nights besides. I’ve started praying a short version of it when I don’t know what else to pray, and it feels less like reciting a list than checking in with family.