Advent Day 18: Love

THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT – WEDNESDAY December 18, 2024

READ Revelation 21:1–27
This is John’s description of the new heaven and the new earth—our future home—where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”

REFLECT
In Revelation 21 and 22, when God depicts the climax of the coming kingdom, the apex of his redemption, he shows us a city—the Holy City, the new Jerusalem.

When we look at the Holy City, we discover something very strange. In the midst of the city is a crystal river, and on each side of the river is the tree of life, bearing fruit and leaves that heal the nations of all their wounds and the effects of the curse (Revelation 22:2–3). This city is the fulfillment of the Garden of Eden. We began life in a garden, but will end it in a city—a city with healing leaves and the tree of life.

The new heaven and the new earth mean that this world will be restored, purified, and beautified. It is a new material creation, in which everything sad that has ever happened will come untrue. It will be the utter defeat of evil, because all the evil and suffering that you have ever experienced and that the world has ever experienced will only make the eventual glory and joy greater. It is not just that we are going to be consoled for it or compensated for it. In some way, it is going to be brought into that glory and made even greater because it happened. C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce says, “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”

PRAY
Pray that the love of Christ would give you hope in the midst of the many sorrows of this world and how they sometimes threaten to undo us. Pray that as we long for the day when he will make all things new, put all things right, and defeat all evil, banish all suffering, and bring in his kingdom fully that we would hope in him because of his great love for us. Pray for his long expected return — come soon, Lord Jesus!