Sunday 26 Aug 2012

Sunday Reading: Revelation 21:1-8

Key Verse: Revelation 21:4
4  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Devotion:
Can you think of one thing that you have been looking forward to; not something like a nice dinner or a great present but something that goes beyond the normal? Maybe you have been looking forward to this for a long time, maybe more than a year. Maybe you are not quite sure what you are expecting but somehow you are still looking forward to it… There are going to be things that you will hear about and things that you will say a huge “WOW” to and others that will make you uneasy, but somehow you still look forward to them…

When we get to know Christ as our Lord and Saviour we get to know a bit more about heaven and a few of the things we can look forward to. Some of the things we hear may make us uneasy because we cannot grasp just what they will be like. Other things will make us shout “WOW” when you hear about them. When we read through the descriptions that God has given us of what lies ahead we begin to realise that what we have written down has just got to be the tip of the iceberg.  I am sure that no man would have been ready for the extremes of heaven and hell and so we find that the descriptions given are just tasters of what we can expect.

Heaven is going to be a place that is beyond any of our expectations and no matter how much we try to find things on earth by which we can compare or describe it by, we will always fall short of the mark. Just the fact that we shall not have to experience any pain or displeasure anymore should be enough for us to realise that it is special, very special. We can throw away the rule-book that we have by which we describe earthly things with and rewrite the book according to what we shall find.

When God got John to write these words down it would be a glimpse of what would be to come because no earthly explanation can describe the special place that God has prepared for us. God allowed John to experience a part of what he could expect and yet John was still at a loss for words. God described Himself as the Alpha and Omega to make sure John realised that He was here before this started, and He will be here right through eternity where we will be able to join Him. We can look at every good thing around us and begin to realise that if we can have such wonders whilst we live in a corrupt world, then the wonders we shall see what we join Him in eternity will be beyond our dreams. God is Wonderful!

Points to Ponder:
What do you look forward to?

Do you realise how long eternity is?