Mtr Kelli Joyce

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Dear Friends in Christ,

As we near the end of a year that has been full of death and sorrow and crying and pain, I am finding great comfort in these words from the Revelation to John. God does not will these things for us. God is, even now, carrying out in tranquility the plan of salvation, and this passage gives us a glimpse of how the story will end.

Of course this doesn't mean that the experiences we have in this life are unimportant, or worse, are somehow less-than-really-real. What we live is real, and God is with us in and through it. God is not waiting for the end of the age to love us, or to care for us, or to act in history. And still, imagining the final fulfillment of God's plan brings me a unique feeling of peace. God will dwell with us, forever. There will be no more pain. What we see in part now, and experience in part now, we will have fully, forever.

I'm holding onto this as we move toward 2021. We worship a God who is making all things new, and who chose incarnation as a baby so that the future John describes might be possible for us. No matter what may come, we have cause for hope. Thanks be to God.

In peace,
Mtr Kelli