Week 6 – The People of God in a Strange Land
Revelation 21:1-8 New heaven and new earth
Revelation 21:9-22:7 The new Jerusalem
The end times are fascinating. All too often we get caught up in the counting and the descriptions. The animals, the scrolls, the lampstands, the bowls, the gates, the measurements of the city, the types of foundation, the layout, and the architecture and landscaping. Then we spend hundreds of years depicting and debating how those precise things, those measurable things, those quantifiable things, should be interpreted, or measured, or what they mean.
And so we make models of the Holy City. We spend days and hours deciphering and doing divine math on the numbers and the symbols. In so doing, we neglect the powerful description of the God dwelling among us. We neglect the image of God wiping the tears from our eyes, that death and dying shall be no more, rivers of life, trees for the healing of the nations, and God will reign there forever and ever.
If we are to start a new life, perhaps we should focus our eyes on what God is doing, and get away from bean counting. Can we move from counting each and everything, as a very human way of keeping score, to
joy over being in the presence of God, and reflecting on the new reality of being in the presence of God, with all that means, for ever and ever?
