Years ago on a staff retreat, my fellow ministers and I went to a movie called Remember the Titans. The movie chronicled the difficulties of integration on a High School football team in Virginia. At a poignant moment in the movie, one of the players, tears streaming down his face, says to his teammate, “It’s not always going to be like this.”
Our broken world sometimes feels like a bucket of tears. We watch the machinations of people and think, “Nothing is ever going to change. It is always going to be the same.” John tells us the truth. In his vision he sees a new world. The Holy City of the new Jerusalem comes down to the earth. Best of all, God is actually with his people. The first thing he does is wipe every tear from our eyes. God destroys the last enemy, death, once and for all. God makes everything new.
When Jesus came the first time, he began to unravel the brokenness of our world. When he returns, he will finish the job. We live in the “already but not yet.” In Christ, God has begun the process of making all things new. Everything old and broken will be restored. We will know fully as we are fully known.
At the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Samwise Gamgee awakens to discover that he is alive. He says to Gandalf, “Gandalf I though you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
Just so, we will awaken someday to find that God has set everything right in the world. It’s not always going to be like this. Everything sad will come untrue.
