New!
Read Revelation 21:1-5.
Most people love new things. New experiences, new foods to sample, new people to meet, new clothes...some people get in trouble with "new," as they spend their way into deep debt buying a new house, a new car, new everything. I grew up with a guy living in our town who needed (or felt he needed) a new car every two years. He loved new. We love new.
Except when it comes to faith matters. Then we want everything to stay the same. Don't bring in that new music. Don't put new paint on the walls. (I had one family several years ago threaten to leave the church over the paint on the walls, I kid you not.) Don't try new ways of preaching. And don't bring that new technology into our worship space.
And yet we serve a God who is, as the prophet Isaiah tells us, is doing new things (43:19). That's his work, his "job," if you will. God is in the "new" business. (What does he think about our resistance to new?) At the end of this morning's reading, he proclaims that the goal of history is to make everything new (21:5). What does that mean?
The broken will be healed—remade, as if nothing had ever been broken. Broken people will be made new. Our broken world will be made whole.
The sin-sick will be made well. There will be no more death, crying, pain or hurting (21:4)—all a result of the sin in the world brought about by the Fall. Sin will be gone; we will not remember it any more.
The cosmos will be like it was at Eden—whole, harmonious, the way God intended it to be. Isaiah says it will look like this: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them" (11:6). It will be a world put to rights (to borrow N. T. Wright's phrase), made the way God wanted it all along.
Can you imagine such a world? Of course you can't. It's never been this way, and in our limited perspective, we can't imagine it ever could be. And yet, even though we've never been there, we long for such a world, don't we? There is, built within us, a longing for such a new place. We long for it because that's what we were made for. I love the way C. S. Lewis puts it: "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Another world, a world known as the Father's House, the place where we were made for, the place where we shall one day dwell for eternity.
And that's another side of Advent: longing for not only the first coming of Jesus, but the second as well. Because at his Second Advent, this hope will become a reality. And that's why the last prayer of the Bible and the fervent prayer of the church throughout history has been the real prayer of Advent: "Amen, come Lord Jesus!" Indeed, come, Lord Jesus!
Most people love new things. New experiences, new foods to sample, new people to meet, new clothes...some people get in trouble with "new," as they spend their way into deep debt buying a new house, a new car, new everything. I grew up with a guy living in our town who needed (or felt he needed) a new car every two years. He loved new. We love new.
Except when it comes to faith matters. Then we want everything to stay the same. Don't bring in that new music. Don't put new paint on the walls. (I had one family several years ago threaten to leave the church over the paint on the walls, I kid you not.) Don't try new ways of preaching. And don't bring that new technology into our worship space.
And yet we serve a God who is, as the prophet Isaiah tells us, is doing new things (43:19). That's his work, his "job," if you will. God is in the "new" business. (What does he think about our resistance to new?) At the end of this morning's reading, he proclaims that the goal of history is to make everything new (21:5). What does that mean?
The broken will be healed—remade, as if nothing had ever been broken. Broken people will be made new. Our broken world will be made whole.
The sin-sick will be made well. There will be no more death, crying, pain or hurting (21:4)—all a result of the sin in the world brought about by the Fall. Sin will be gone; we will not remember it any more.
The cosmos will be like it was at Eden—whole, harmonious, the way God intended it to be. Isaiah says it will look like this: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them" (11:6). It will be a world put to rights (to borrow N. T. Wright's phrase), made the way God wanted it all along.
Can you imagine such a world? Of course you can't. It's never been this way, and in our limited perspective, we can't imagine it ever could be. And yet, even though we've never been there, we long for such a world, don't we? There is, built within us, a longing for such a new place. We long for it because that's what we were made for. I love the way C. S. Lewis puts it: "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Another world, a world known as the Father's House, the place where we were made for, the place where we shall one day dwell for eternity.
And that's another side of Advent: longing for not only the first coming of Jesus, but the second as well. Because at his Second Advent, this hope will become a reality. And that's why the last prayer of the Bible and the fervent prayer of the church throughout history has been the real prayer of Advent: "Amen, come Lord Jesus!" Indeed, come, Lord Jesus!
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