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May 5 - May 6, 2020
There is nothing like stepping out your door into a bright and beckoning world. This is why people vacation in beautiful places. It is also the secret to the stories you love—that magical moment when the hero or heroine steps into a brave new world. You might still remember that lovely catch of breath and skip of heartbeat the first time you followed Lucy through the back of the wardrobe into a snowy wood. Older readers may recall a scene from the first Star Wars film, when young Luke Skywalker steps out of his home in the deserts of Tatooine to watch not one but two suns setting into the
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We are preparing our hearts to receive the hope that alone can be the anchor of our souls. One day soon you will step into a renewed earth, a young earth, sparkling like an orchard of cherry trees after a rain shower. Joy will be yours. How do we open our hearts to this after so much pain and disappointment? We have lost many things as we’ve passed through the battlefields of this war-torn world; our humanity has been stripped of such essential goodness. One of our greatest losses is the gift of wonder, the doorway into the kingdom heart. But each of us has special places and favorite stories
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Narnia, Middle Earth, Pandora, Tatooine—they are all new worlds and yet not entirely new.
different enough to be enchanting.
“to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it.”2 He felt the reason every age still reads fairy tales is actually not to escape our world but to re-enchant it:
Our hearts long to recover a sense of wonder; it is one of the reasons only the child-heart can receive the kingdom.
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?”
That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next.
(Romans 8:15–21 THE MESSAGE)
As a boy I loved all things new—a new book, a
new bike, new cowboy boots; new lunch box, pocketknife, haircut, friend. Most adults love the “newness” of something new—the smell of a new car, the carpet in a new house. A new song, a new set of your favorite gear, new shoes (clearly Imelda’s love was the newness of those shoes; she only wore them once, if at all). “New year, new you” goes the marketing every January. We all long for a fresh start in a new world.
all this shall be ours, a breathtaking world waiting right outside our door when all the earth is restored to its full glory.
What do the fjords of Norway look like when they are completely unveiled? What of the Andes or the waters of the South Pacific? English painter Lilias Trotter burst into tears when she first saw the Alps, overcome by their beauty; will we weep or shout or stand speechless when we see them reborn? Oh yes, we will recover wonder.
What will waterfalls be like in the new earth? What of the giant sequoias or tender wildflowers? What will rain be like? And think of your special places; imagine what it will be like to see them in their glory. How sweet it will be to revisit treasured nooks and vistas, gardens and swimming holes again, see them as they truly “are,” unveiled, everything God meant them to be. Part of what makes the wonder so precious is that while it is a “new” world, it is our world, the world dearest to our hearts, romance at its best.
What will it be like when a wolf pup does this . . . or a polar bear cub?
heaven comes to earth; our home is right here on a renewed planet. How could our creative God renew his precious earth and not fill it
with a renewed animal kingdom? That would be like a school without children, a village without people.
unless you want to dismiss this as completely allegorical, we have wolves, lambs, leopards, goats, cows, lions, and bears in the kingdom as well.
the animal kingdom
will be our joyful partners.
Lawrence Anthony
The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the
Africa...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Imagine the animals coming to our call, coming to honor us as their renewed masters. What will it be like to be partners again with nature?
Imagine—we will be like Noah, as the animals run to us to be reacquainted.
Will your childhood dog run to meet you? (God makes all things new.)
Think about the intelligence of restored creation.
canines understand more than 165 words (!); brain scans reveal that their minds process what we say and how we say it just like human brains
I think it will be far more wondrous to “speak” to animals each in their language, rather than have them all speak ours.
Creation wants to play. My dogs allow me about an hour and a half at the keyboard before they interrupt and insist on a romp.
Nick Jans tells the story of a rare encounter with a black wolf in Juneau, Alaska, who came out of the woods one day on the outskirts of town and played with the dogs locals had brought to run there. Wildlife biologists consider one sighting in a lifetime a success. The wolf hung around for years, showing a keen desire to interact and even play with humans, as if he were a messenger from Eden.9
What else might we ride?
Jesus is the forerunner, the “second Adam.” All that he was, we shall be. We will have restored bodies like the body of Christ after his resurrection—able to walk on water and defy certain limits known to us now.
“St Peter for a few seconds walked on the water,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “and the day will come when there will be a re-made universe, infinitely obedient to the will of glorified and obedient men, when we can do all things, when we shall be those gods that we are described as being in Scripture.”
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.
In my dream I burst into tears. I’ve never done that in a dream before.
Like for many people, my relationship with my dad was kind of a mixed bag. My boyhood days were very precious. My father loved the outdoors, and we did a lot of camping and fishing together; I have golden memories of those days. But then the fall of man caught up with him: a series of lost jobs, followed by the drinking; then a stroke; then cancer; finally that brutal mocker, dementia. He spent his last days in a small convalescent facility in Southern California, then came home for hospice.
The Silver Chair
King Caspian has died,
suddenly he leapt up and stood before them—a very young man. . . . And he rushed to Aslan and flung his arms as far as they would go round the huge neck; and he gave
Death is utterly swept away at the Great Restoration. And not only death, but every other form of sorrow, assault, illness, and harm we’ve ever known. You will be completely renewed—body, soul, and spirit. How do we even imagine this?
Last fall she had an injury, tore her labral muscle in her right hip. That muscle provides the primary internal stability in the hip socket, and with it gone, deep arthritic erosion was revealed underneath. For the next nine months Stasi lived in chronic pain, bone-rubbing-on-bone pain, the kind only narcotics relieve. She walked with a cane when she walked at all; but most days she was confined to a chair. She lost her daily morning prayer walk, her precious time where she brings her heart back to the heart of God, prays for all those she cares so deeply about. Her prayer walk is her primary
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We are a golden retriever family; currently, we have two.
Her joy is boundless; her enjoyment of everything is boundless. Because she is young. This will be our joy in the new earth, as we are made new.
youthfulness is what enables us to find the wonder in everything.
Think of it—if God would offer today to remove from you just one of your greatest sources of internal pain, what would you ask him to remove?
Have you ever imagined what you would be like if the Fall had never taken place? Have you wondered what an unbroken, unstained, glorious, true, unblemished version of you would be? No false self, no woundedness, nothing shaped by the broken, mad world?
Think of the joy it will be to see your spouse, your dearest friend, your son or daughter no longer fighting their internal battles. To see them young and well, alive and free, everything you knew they were!
Whom do you look forward to seeing again? We’re all going to be at the wedding feast, for we are each of us guests of honor at that banquet. We get Bilbo’s party. Put that on your bathroom mirror: We get Bilbo’s party! Just think of the joy in all the reunions that will take place!
Elie Wiesel said God created man because he loves stories.
