All Things New: Heaven, Earth, and the Restoration of Everything You Love

by John Eldredge

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 that are still able to reawaken it. We love being taken into the homeliness of the hobbit’s shire, but our hearts begin to race when Frodo learns he must flee and never return. Wonder grows as we push farther into the unknown realms—the Old Forest, the Inn of the Prancing Pony, the journey through the wilderness with a Ranger they know as Strider. Rivendell enchants, but that tang of dangerous adventure returns again when the fellowship sets forth on the quest upon which