I saw a new heaven and a new earth,
coming down out of heaven from God,
Rev 21:1
It has been years since I made a blog post and I am not sure why. Mostly I think it is because I have wondered who I am writing to and if anyone really reads these things that come out of my mind. A friend the other day commented that she missed reading my posts and I feel an urge to write again for my own benefit if not for anyone else’s. Robert Benson in his book, Dancing on the Head of a Pin, notes that the most important thing in writing a book is to know who your jury is. Who are you writing to? I am not writing a book, but I am writing, so for lack of a particular jury, I have decided to write to my children and grandchildren. Not because I even think they will read my musings, but because it at least gives me an audience in my mind. If you run across these musings and want to listen in, you are welcome to read along. If you do, feel free to “follow” and/or drop me a comment letting me know you are there.
So, I was driving home this morning after breakfast with one of my grands, delightful time, by the way. My route home on Virtue Rd (Knox County), not our Virtue Rd, the other one (Loudon County). There is one in each county very close together, but not connected. My neighbor claims that there are some pizza delivery folks driving around out there in no man’s land still trying to find the correct Virtue Rd address. But, I digress. The road leads by a small stream engorged by muddy water due to the hard rains last night and this morning and running down into Fort Loudon Lake. I began to wonder…will streams and rivers in the kingdom that Jesus talks so much about ever be muddy?
Let me digress again here for just a moment. I just ran a search in the gospels on the word heaven. In general, and mostly, please don’t nit pick me here, in the gospels when the word heaven is used it is speaking of where God dwells, not our destination when we die. Our destination when we die is where Jesus refers to as the kingdom and the kingdom will be down here, not in heaven where God dwells. Not the down here as we know it, but the new heavens and the new earth, redeemed and restored to creation’s intent in the garden. Jesus’s promised return is to the earth where we will “rule” with Him as he intended from the beginning of the story. How cool is that!
So back to the muddy steam. Why is a stream muddy when it rains? Is a muddy stream a normal occurrence when the rain falls on the earth or is mud in the water and the muddiness a result of erosion and the undoing of normal vegetation, soil care, and the water cycle? Should we expect to see mud in the water, is this another result of the fall or, in the kingdom, will the waters run clear and pure even with the heavy rains? Will there even be “heavy” rains in the kingdom or is a heavy rain due to a water cycle, a climate change caused by the fall? What does a restored earth look like when the cycles of life and the interrelationships of the systems and people sync the way God intended and created them in the beginning?
Understand that all that is written above, to me ends with a big question mark not a period. I am not making a statement about what it will all look like or how it will be accomplished. I am asking a question, a question from a position of wonder (How?) and wonder (Wow!) that God as God can work all this out and we get to participate and watch as he does His thing.
The final question comes because He, Jesus has invited us to participate in the restoration that is happening as I write. What does that look like and how am I participating in the building of a kingdom that, according to Jesus, is already present and is going to be completed? I wonder? (How and wow!)
Maybe I am just out of my mind, but I was wondering.
