Thursday 28th December - Revelation 21

Today’s chapter is Revelation 21

Tom writes:

This is our great hope. This is what we cry out for like a hot shower and our own bed after a week of soggy camping. The content of this chapter should be imagined and then reimagined to ensure our hope is real. Over and again I come across “bible people” who have no real imagination for what our hope will look like. Over and again I realise my understanding of “what it will look like” is too super-spiritual and vague to cause any change in my 9-5. In truth most communication about “heaven” sounds so much like an out-of-body floaty-sunny fantasy land that our minds cannot accept it. Revelation’s images are far more “earthy” than many of us ever manage. In fact - get this shock - the hope of Revelation is not for us to go to heaven at all. Please do think about that. The hope of Revelation is not that we will float out of our bodies and out of this earth to some hovering utopia in the skies. No. The hope of Revelation comes down out of heaven. Twice in this passage we see our hope coming down “out of heaven”. Both times it is the bride or the holy city that comes down “out of heaven” - where it has been paradising with Jesus while it waited for the New Earth to be made.

The key phrase is that now, in this New Earth, God has come down to live with his people. All wrongs have been righted. The earth has been transformed; made perfect and fully redeemed in every way, but something that we could still only describe as ‘earth’. It seems like this good and spotless place will have nations and kings and people who can make and bring things of splendour to the Lamb. It seems that the New Earth will be like Eden when it was “very good”, except more populated, thriving, swirling, life-infested in every way. The garden will show signs of human cultivation, with every single good thing done in the body represented and remembered there in some way. It will be a city of joy. Brilliant and beautiful without a trace or threat of shame. So if you ever start to feel sick of camping, if you ever feel bored of feeling half-washed, then do not despair; the hope is coming. It is real, it is good, and if you have your name in Jesus’ book you are guaranteed to make it to that glorious, beautiful, exhilarating resurrection of the earth.

Question for reflection

Can you describe your vision of earth and heaven becoming one?