Posts with the tag “revelation-21”

On September 11, 2001, Genelle Guzman-McMillan was trapped in the rubble of the North Tower for twenty-seven hours. Alive in the dark. Unable to move. Unable to see. With no way to know whether anyone was still looking. On September 12, a hand found hers. The ancient Jewish framework for understanding history has a name for the age we are living in. Olam Hazeh. This current age. The age of the rubble. The groaning. The twenty-seven hours. But Olam Hazeh is not the final word. Acts 3:21 says Jesus remains in heaven until the restoration of all things. All things. The rubble is not the ending. The rescue is still underway. Read the full post.  Read More

Psychologists call it a defensive mechanism. Pretending to be indifferent when you actually care deeply is a way of protecting yourself from rejection, from helplessness, from the pain of wanting something you cannot control. Most people know what that feels like from the inside. Here is what they may not know. The Bible has been addressing this condition for thousands of years. And the God at the center of the eschatological story is not a deity who performed indifference while creation fell apart. He is a God whose care has been constant, purposeful, and driving the entire story toward the day He makes all things new. The comeback Nehemiah experienced did not start with a plan. It started with grief. It started when he stopped pretending. Read the full post.  Read More

Sonny Kapoor runs a crumbling hotel with a leaking roof and broken plumbing, and greets every disaster with the same line delivered with complete sincerity and absolutely no supporting evidence: "Everything will be alright in the end. So if it is not alright, it is not the end." The guests find it infuriating and irresistible. Because they want it to be true. Here is what Sonny did not know. He was not being optimistic. He was being theological. The Bible has been making his argument for thousands of years, backed by something far more solid than a hopeful hotel manager in Jaipur. Time is not a wheel going nowhere. It is a story going somewhere magnificent. And God already declared what the ending looks like. Read the full post.  Read More

A foreman walks up to Carl Fredricksen's house, surrounded by construction equipment and developers who want him gone, and asks plainly: when are you going to give this place up? Carl does not flinch. He says: "When I'm dead." The audience laughs. Then they cry. Because every one of us has something we are holding onto with everything we have. Something the world keeps pressuring us to release. But here is what Peter told people who had already lost most of what they had built: you have an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Reserved in heaven. Beyond the reach of any bulldozer. The question is not whether you will hold on. The question is what you are holding. Read the full post.  Read More