God’s everlasting blessing
May God bend close to you today and hold you tightly in His big arms. There you will find endless peace, wonderful comfort, and limitless grace to face whatever comes your way. At times it seems that physical bodies are sabotaging us, My degenerating spine and resultant pain remind me to contemplate Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:7, 16-18 (NLT) “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves….Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”
You and I may never meet on this earth, but we joyfully look forward to that Day when Jesus Christ will make everything right and new. In that Land where God Himself is light and all darkness, sin, illness, and death are forever banished, we will dance and never grow tired, we will sing and never lose our voices, we will visit new friends and old, and we will finally understand every marvelous nuance of God’s Word because we will sit at His feet and He will explain all things to us. We will live in that new Eden where we visit with God in the cool of the evening. There God’s angels will show us “a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. We will see it flowing down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grows a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. These trees produce healing for all physical, spiritual, emotional illnesses. We will all splash like children in those waters [1] (which are the source of those miraculous healing pools of Bethesda [2]).
No curses remain. There are neither genetic defects nor agonizing memories of abuse. No bullies, hatemongers, or tyrants will be present. Never again will we see, experience, or even hear about wickedness, evil, murder, or war, for God is the King and this is His Kingdom where the wolf and the lamb will live together and a little child will lead them[3]. The throne of God and of the Lamb is there, and his servants worship him. And we will see his face and there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on us and in us. And we will reign forever and ever.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
[1] Adapted from Revelation 22
[2] John 5:2-4 Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches waiting for a certain movement of the water, for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had.
[3] Isaiah 11:6