Friday, May 04, 2007
Meditation: ‘Making All Things New’?
I gave this meditation this morning as opening devotions at a meeting of the Calvin College East Coast and Midwest Regional Council.
Reading: Revelation 21:1-5
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ (v.5)
This stirring verse in Revelation 21 is the climax to Revelation, and, I would argue, the climax to the entire Bible.
‘See, I am making all things new.’
In a sermon N.T. Wright preached last fall, he said: “The ‘good news’ of the Christian gospel is that [God’s] new world, the new creation, has already begun. It began when Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead on Easter morning.”
You could say that Christ exited the tomb and God said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’
Indeed, the promises of Revelation are not just “someday” promises, taking effect only after the second coming of Christ. The promises of Revelation are being fulfilled now. Christ is building his new kingdom now.
God is making everything new already. Wright says that new creation is ‘coming forwards to meet us in the present.’
‘See, I am making all things new.’
New creation is emerging,
in part for now
in full eventually, when Christ returns.
That is hard to believe.
Not only because it’s such a massive and awe-inspiring promise
But also because it so often seems so counter to reality.
‘I am making all things new.’
That’s hard to believe when you read about Darfur, Baghdad, Blacksburg.
That’s hard to believe when you get bad news from the doctor.
That’s hard to believe when, last month, a 12-year-old in my church’s youth program was killed in a drive-by-shooting just blocks from our church.
Sometimes, God’s new creation project seems to be losing ground, not gaining it.
I remember walking out of the movie An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about global warming, and thinking that what I had just seen was not so much what Paul describes in Romans 8:
the liberation from bondage to decay
as much as
the strengthening of that bondage to decay.
But looking for an overall arc to cosmic history, to world peace, to the global temperature, is not the best way to measure God’s promises.
After all, God’s promise is this:
The seed of the kingdom has been planted.
New creation has begun.
Right now it may look more like a mustard seed than a strong tree
More like a carpenter in an out-of-the-way Galilean town than an emperor
An underground movement more than a worldwide campaign.
But the kingdom has come, and is coming.
You can see it in a thousand small but sure ways.
In reconciled enemies and mended bones
In sacrificial generosity, an encouraging word, an unnoticed principled ethical stand,
A worship service. A new church plant.
In these moments God’s thundering promise of Revelation 21:5, ‘I am making all things new, is certain,’ even if it’s not very noticeable or celebrated.
This really hit me only 12 days ago, when my son, our first child, was born.
He was a contradiction in terms: a jumbo preemie, born five weeks early but weighing 6 pounds 10 ounces.
I have never been as transfixed by anything as I have been by simply watching him as I hold him, surveying his tiny features, being fascinated by every seemingly random facial expression and twitch of his arms.
And looking at his tiny body,
And marveling at how everything about him is so new
I heard Rev 21:5 as never before:
‘See, I am making all things new.’
This promise is coming true, even as we speak, ever since Easter, ever since God promised as early as Genesis 3 to follow his creation project with his new creation project.
‘I am making all things new.’
It’s a promise that comes to us in small ways sometimes, in small packages weighing 6 pounds 10 ounces. But this promise is as real, as tangible, as undeniable and irreversible, as this new person in my arms, in my life:
‘See, I am making all things new.’
We have this promise, and the promise that immediately follows it in Revelation 21:
‘These words are trustworthy and true.’
Blessed be the name of the Lord, who is making all things new!
Prayer:
Lord, we believe this promise.
Even when the evidence appears otherwise
Open our eyes to see the budding seeds of your new creation.
Open our hands to do our small part in the building of your kingdom.
Strike us with awe and gratitude for this awesome promise
That you are making everything new.
We pray through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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