Imagine Everything Made New

 

Revelation 21:3-5a 
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 
 
John Lennon wrote a beautiful song in 1971, called Imagine. This year that song turns fifty years old and is still massively popular, because it captures two things that are true for every human in the world, no matter what your religious beliefs are. First, we know that the world is broken. People are killing and dying, there is greed and hunger, and there is no peace. It hurts us to see so much pain and crying in the world, and our own hearts and tears add to the mountain of loss. 

The second thing that this song offers is hope. A dream of a brotherhood of man sharing everything, living in peace, and living as one. Our hearts yearn for this dream, and it’s fun to sit back and imagine what that would be like.  

Unfortunately, these are the easy parts. Hundreds of songs and stories and movies capture our hearts with real pain and wonderful dreams. We know these are true and we want everything to be made perfect and beautiful. The hard part in the real world is getting from tears and death to happiness and peace. If we are to have any real hope of getting to the dream when the song ends, we need a real solution.  
The best Lennon could conjure up in Imagine was a world with no countries, no religion, no heaven, and no hell. To find hope in this, we would need to heal global divisions to where people all agreed on how to live and didn’t need to be governed. Beyond this, the people would not just have to agree to share one religion, but no religion, that is no system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices... which sounds like a system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Finally, to find hope we need to imagine there is no heaven and no hell, just this world. But, if there is a heaven and a hell, we can’t imagine them away or destroy them. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to stop imagining a better world. In fact, let’s set the bar even higher and imagine an even better world. You may say that I’m a dreamer, but this hope based on words that John was told to write, because God promised they would come true and he wanted to give us hope in words that are trustworthy and true. 

Here is his real and amazing promise - “I am making all things new.” 

The first part is in verse 4. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Do you see the incredible, intimate nature of this promise? He, a real person, Jesus, will wipe away every tear. He is not a far off, impersonal force or essence. Think of what it feels like when someone who loves you, sees you crying and comes near to you, touching your cheek and wiping away your tears. This is to be known and loved. And for Jesus, it’s not just a tender gesture. The tears he wipes away will be your last, because he is accomplishing the impossible for us, permanently fixing the cause of all death, pain, and crying. The cause of these is sin, which is the bible’s word for attitudes and actions that fall short of God’s perfection. Jesus bore the punishment that each of us deserves for our part of the problem, he completed this on the cross in real time two thousand years ago.  

In real time in the future, he will complete the second part. All these broken things we experience will pass away and become former things that don’t exist anymore. Because everything, including you and me, will be made new and will never break or fail or sin again. Imagine that and believe it!