Picture the city, the new Jerusalem, high towers, domes, banners, flags, flowers, window-sills,

overflowing with gardens and hung billowing fabric. The city is packed, the mood triumphant, and on

the main road to the palace the crowd has left a wide space bare for the parade. Here come the Caribam. They land like little mountains

descending, huge polymorphic creatures with the heads of eagles and bulls and lions and wild winged bodies leading the parade.

They are snorting, bellowing, crying, full of the

fear satisfaction of evil overthrown. The lions roar and toss their heads.

The eagles shake and fold huge wings.

When they land, the ground shakes.

There are unknown creatures seen only in rare visions,

beautiful, wonderful, creatures of smoke and wind and fire. There are serifim descending like huge fantastic ships and with them the angels.

Their bodies are like human bodies.

Their faces are like human faces, but only in the way that every human face is like God's face.

I hope that got your attention, friends, because we've got a really very cool treat for you this

week and over the next several weeks that was Lane Eldridge here with John

Eldridge this week and opening up a series that I'll introduce to you in a moment.

But before we can go there, before we can partake in some of the goodness,

I just want to set us up, as I've been doing for months now.

I've been opening the podcast off and on by saying this is a brutal time to be a human being.

It's a brutal time on our humanity and it has to do with the

insane pace of life. Everybody's running. It has to do with the complexity of the world now that we're navigating. It has to do with the

assault on our attention and the amount of media that is not only coming at us, but that frankly we are completely addicted to and spun up in and then you throw into that.

Just so little margin left to be human to do the things that we enjoy anymore, making a meal.

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