...and Beginnings

Passage: Revelation 21

A friend of mine had parents who lived in Johannesburg, South Africa.  On a visit to my friend’s home, he observed a certain behavior in his mother.  Whenever his kids were playing outside, she couldn’t relax in the house.  She kept jumping up and looking out the windows.  Periodically she would even, without warning, dart out the front door and walk around the house.  When he asked her about it, she said, “I just have to make sure the kids are safe.”  She was used to living in a place in which there was always the possibility of a home invasion, armed burglary, or kidnapping.  Her house had bars on the windows and an iron perimeter fence.  In her hometown, nobody’s kids played outside unattended.  It just wasn’t safe. 

When you live in place where violence, economic inequality, oppression and abuse are constant realities you develop certain instincts.  You become hyper-vigilant.  Suspicious.  Self-protective.  You stop being conscious that you’re even reacting to perceived threats.  You believe this is just normal life. 

We are so accustomed to living in a world shaped by the presence of corruption, evil and death that we are no longer aware of the way these realities have shaped us.  And we can’t imagine a world without them.  But deep down we long for better.  And imbedded in our collective memories is an awareness of a better reality.  The world for which we were created was one without tears, mourning, crying or death. 

And God’s promise has always been to bring us back into such a world.  The point of bringing this world and its history to an end is to bring about something new.  At the end of the Book of Revelation we’re given a glimpse of this new thing.  John writes,

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…

The Greek word we’ve translated “new” is kainos, which means, “previously unknown”.  To a world full of people who have only ever known an existence lived in the shadow of death, God promises a completely new kind of existence.  One free of pain, tragedy, loss and fear.  One in which humans live in constant communion with God, their Creator and Father; and with Jesus Christ, their Savior and the lover of their souls.  John describes this second Advent, the New Creation, as a wedding.  The moment we’ve all been waiting for.  Our eternal union with the one for whom we were made; the one who makes us holy and whole. 

The New Heaven and New Earth are so far beyond what anyone has experienced that John describes them mainly in terms of what isn’t there:

no more death or mourning or crying or pain. 

But also:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

And:

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

And finally this detail:

On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 

In this New Creation there will be no need for locks; bars; motion sensors; Homeland Security.  There will be no adversaries; no terrorists; no thieves or abusers or murderers.  Only the constant presence of God.  And the company of all God’s children, gathered together from every time and every place. 

If the normal places you go for hope, love, joy and peace aren’t cutting it this year, look ahead.  Take in John’s testimony of the fresh, new, “previously unknown” thing God has in store for you.  Be willing to defer the fulfillment of your wishes and dreams just a little longer.  Jesus Christ, the one who makes all things new, is not slow in keeping his promises.  He is not far off.  He himself testifies,  Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. (Revelation 22:12-14)