Something to Anticipate

[February 04, 2011]   --"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'See, the home of God is among mortals.'"-Revelation 21: 1-3a

As the blizzard approached Lincoln, the community was abuzz with what would happen.  We wondered aloud how much snow we would get; we stocked up on necessary items; we compared the impending snowpocalypse with blizzards of the past.  Anticipation was the order of the day.  And anticipation is a large component of Christianity  While the Christian life orients us to the responsibilities of day to day living, it also reminds us that there is more to come.  It orients us always to the future, to the impending reign of God.  The Bible concludes with the Book of Revelation, which is itself a prophesy of the end of days, and it concludes with this image which I have offered above for your reading pleasure.  In the end, the prophet writes, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and the two will become one.

This image has always stricken me as one of the most elegant in all of Scripture; the new heaven merging with the new earth, both transformed by the power of God through Christ, both in perfect harmony with one another.  For those of us who wait in eager longing for this day to come, the promises of God offer us a profound and rich hope for the days to come.  None of us can know what is going to happen in the future; we do not know the number of our days or the stories which will become the substance of our lives.  But we do know that all of time and creation are marked and ordered by the very God we worship, the God who will one day dwell amongst us for all time.  That is something to anticipate.

Prayer:  Holy God, we thank you for the hope we have received in Jesus Christ.  We ask that he will come and transform this world and us with it.  Help us to live as a people of hope, and to eagerly long for the days to come.  We pray in Jesus' name.  Amen.

[Phil Blackburn, First Presbyterian Church]