Making All Things New

The heartaches of this world make us long for the day when the Father will restore all things to their rightful place.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

I stepped inside the church building I hadn’t been in since the eighth grade when I served there as an altar boy. Right away, I spotted the golden altar tabernacle box that houses the communion host. I hadn’t thought about that box in decades.

A friend’s body lay in a casket in front of it, just beyond the altar. The priest made a reference to the crucifix above the tabernacle box, then pointed to the stained glass window above that depicted the resurrected Christ.

If all the imagery was supposed to illicit some sort of reverential response, it did its job on me that day.

Sometimes I’ll look at my worn-out legs – the varicose veins, the edema in my right leg due to the damage a blood clot left behind – and think the mileage is catching up with me. Friends don’t like to hear me talk this way, so I try to keep it to a minimum. But in the church that day, I couldn’t help but think about the resurrected Christ and what it will feel like to have a glorified body.

This was my third funeral in the past few months (and I’ve attended another one since). When your contemporaries begin to pass away, you become hyper-aware of the brevity of life. And then when their wives or girlfriends call you after the funeral to see if you want any of your friend’s belongings, you are appreciative beyond words, but it just makes it all the more real. And it’s yet another reminder that time is short.

In November of last year, I stood in the backyard at one such friend’s house with his fiancée. I often spent time with that friend around his fire pit in that very spot. But he was gone now, and his fiancée thought I should have his fire pit. As I stepped into his backyard and saw an empty patio, it brought me to tears.

When another friend died this year – a man who had been a mentor to me early in my Christian life – I felt compelled to get up and speak at his funeral. As I stared at his wife and adult children in the front row at the funeral home, tears came easily. I blubbered my way through my tribute to my fallen friend, saying we had lost a spiritual giant.

And that’s exactly how it felt to me – like another piece of my life had disappeared that wasn’t supposed to. But I shouldn’t be surprised by heartache and loss in this world. We know it will come. But it makes me dwell all the more on two scripture passages.

The first comes from John’s revelation:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”

He is making all things new, or as Luke wrote about in Acts 3 (ESV), he is restoring all things:

“But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”

The heartaches of this world make us long for the day when the Father will restore all things to their rightful place. I’m not real sure what that will look like, but I have a feeling it’ll be better than our human imagination can fathom. And I’m so ready for it, aren’t you?