Devotion:
Read Revelation 21:1-8.
I enjoy the Book of Revelation…well, parts of it. I find the letters to the seven churches particularly interesting and can often see messages in those letters for our church today. I led an online study of The Revelation a year or so ago, and all those series of sevens seemed a bit laborious. Revelation is an apocryphal writing, which means it has lots of numerology, cosmic imagery, and symbolism. It does not seem to me that we are to take every image and character and try to apply them to our current events, as some like to do. Frankly, in that online study, I found myself looking forward to today’s passage.
Faithful Christians have nothing to fear in anything in this entire book! And we can look forward with confidence to being part of the beautiful new heaven and new earth the writer describes. The key message in this passage is that God wins. The first readers were Christians who were being persecuted by the Romans for their faith, and they needed assurance that eternal life in God’s presence awaited them. We need and appreciate that assurance as well.
Personal Worship Option:
For your prayer today, close your eyes and imagine what it will be like in this new heaven and earth. What do you trust will be there? What do you know will not? Heaven is unimaginable, but we can dream and anticipate it.
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