Rev. 21:1-7
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
Spring has officially become my new favorite season. It wasn’t always this way. I used to appreciate fall the most. Fall meant getting back to school. Fall meant friends huddled close around backyard fires. Fall meant football, hunting, time with my father in the duck blind. Fall was the most meaningful and most anticipated season of all for me.
But now fall has been supplanted in my estimation. Oh, I still like it, but spring is now where it’s at for me. I’ve grown to appreciate the tulips and the Daffodils as they give us the first splash of outdoor color in 6 months. I’ve grown to appreciate the trees and the shrubs as they put out their supple, delicate, and slightly waxy new leaves. And who could argue with the breeze perfumed with apple and lilac blossoms? I’ve grow to appreciate the ever increasing light as the upper half of our globe lines up more directly to the sun. To me, spring is the best season of all
I know, I put myself at risk in thinking like this. Spring is the season of dusty old poets and song writers. Spring is the season of a a thousand grandmas. Oh yeah, all of my grandmas went on about the flowers and the trees and the leaves and the fragrances of spring. In the spring they’d walk about their yards in their house dresses and clip on earrings rhapsodizing over the joy of it all.
I didn’t get it at that time. It wasn’t at all special to me. I was kind of like Bill Murray in Caddy shack when it came to flowers. Who cares about the flowers? I do now. You see, I’ve changed; drastically changed. What can explain it? Well, for one thing my grandmas have all gone now. My last one died last summer. They have gone the way of all flesh, they have met their end. Others who I am close to have also died. Most recently the pastor who also is responsible for me becoming a pastor is now also gone. And so I grow weary of it. I weary of death and the sadness that comes with it. I weary of the whole idea that people get old. I weary of the idea that I too am getting older.
I know now what my grandmas saw in spring. They saw life, they saw new life that could not be stopped or contained; new life, vigorous, vibrant, and fresh. In spring, they saw something hopeful which I too now see. I see the hostas eagerly poking their furled leaves through the soil, in greater number than the year before. I see asparagus busting through and growing 6 inches in one day! I hear big-eyed big-mouthed baby birds chirping for their mama from the nest. God did this! God designed this wonderful season where we see the return of life. This is what we want! This is what we need!
And this, this is what has been promised! Jesus, Revelation 21:5, “I am making everything new” Did you hear that? “I am making everything new!” He shall say this on the last day. On the day of our resurrection, on the day that he says to you and me and all who believed on his name “come, you who are blessed by my father.” (Matt 25:34) The eternity he has promised us will be like spring on a massive scale. Now If you’re like me and you have at last begun to understand the significance of spring, then you are prepared to understand, at least in part, what you are going to feel like on the day of resurrection.
The joy of a 1000 grandmas in a perennial flower garden in springtime could not compare to what you will feel on that day. For not only will the earth be made new, not only will life be restored on this planet, but life in all of its fulness will be restored in you! You will enjoy it more than you have ever enjoyed it before. That’s because it will be a complete joy and not a partial joy.
You see, any joy we have now is only partial. The joys we have here are always tinged and tainted with other things. For example, let’s say you have a kid who is graduating from high school. You are joyful that they made it, but quite often there is just a little bit of sadness mixed in with that. They’re going away. Your relationship with them will now have to change. Or at weddings, people cry at weddings. Sometimes its out of joy, but Sometimes its because the joy is tinged with sadness of a sort, sadness for all the change that is happening on that day.
We don’t really know pure joy here on this broken earth. Everything else is always mixed in, making it impure. But on the day of resurrection we will know pure joy. Joy that has not been alloyed with sadness or regret or fear, it will be pure. For the voice from the the throne says “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:4) It’s that old order of things that taint’s our joy. That old order of things that assaults the purity of it. That will have passed away.
It’s rather intriguing, I think that even the seasons we are aided in our understanding of the promises of God in his word. It’s hard for me to think it’s by accident. God invented spring, there is record of that in Genesis 1, he reaffirms it in Genesis 9. It’s his deal. The Children of Israel would cross the Red sea and begin their new life with the Lord in spring. The resurrection of Jesus, the thing that seals the Lord’s promise of new life in him happens in spring. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I may be wrong.
Romans 1:20 has something very interesting to say in regard to this: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” What this is saying is that the Nature of God is revealed in what he has made. God has made spring. Spring is the season of new life. Our Lord is the God of new life. Jesus said “ I am the way the the truth and the Life” Peter once said to him, “You have the words of eternal life.”
Okay then, As Romans 1:20 suggests, we can see the nature of God in the season of spring which he created, What then of Fall? Dare we to think of it? Because fall is grey and dark. The time when things die and Fall? Perhaps what we see there is the justice of God. He said to Adam and Eve, “do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil for the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:17). They ate and so came the Fall of man. So came death; so came the “mourning the crying and the pain”; so came the “old order of things.”
When I was younger, fall was my favorite. I do still like it, but there are moments when I see it as an analogy of my life, I’m 50. People call it middle age but if you double it, its clear that I am beyond middle age, at the end of my summer, and am ever nearer to the fall of my own life. What used to be supple warm, young, and green is tending toward, cold, crunchy and hard. I know its inevitable. And so do you. As Children of Adam and Eve we will see the autumn of our lives. In this way, I think Fall is something of a visible representation of God’s law...the reality of what sin has done to us. As we see it, we realize that we must prepare. We must prepare for the the coming winter.
That hymn we sang earlier says it perfectly “As winters come, as winters must, We breath our last, return to dust; still held in Christ. Our souls take wing and trust the promise of the spring.”
That’s what Jesus Resurrection means to us. Jesus is the firstborn among the dead (Col. 1:18); the first to live again forever; the first sign of the eternal Spring and also the endless summer. If we wish to live, if we wish to survive the coming winter, we need him. He is the eternal vine, we are the branches (John 14:5). We must be attached to him. We are attached to him by our baptism. We remain attached to him by hearing his word.
His word is what helps us to see the events of our lives in the greater context of eternity. It’s word that has helped me to enjoy spring so much. For now my experience of spring is tied to the promises of his resurrection. All the experiences of life can be so tied, when the word is part of your life. All that you go through becomes a teachable moment for Jesus your teacher and friend who is with you always using the word you hear to interpret your life for you.
In Final chapter of Revelation, Revelation 22 John says “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the City [of God] On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding it’s fruit every month. ” The tree of life that Adam and Ever were not allowed to eat. Twelve crops of fruit, one for each month. There is no winter; no fall; that old order of things has passed away, there will be no mourning crying and pain. No more death. We’re going to like this. AMEN
