“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. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Revelation 21:1-2)
John Lennon famously sang, “Imagine there’s no heaven.” Two days ago, we listened to Paul (the apostle, not Lennon’s Beatles buddy) sing just the opposite, “Set your minds on things above.” As little as some Christians talk about heaven, you’d think it almost doesn’t matter to us. So let’s imagine there is a heaven for the next few days – and let’s trust God to tell us a little about it through his Word.
Spoiler alert! This comes at the very end of the Bible. So if you’ve been reading through, this will give away some major plot detail. John (the apostle, not Lennon) has been given an all-access pass to the future, to the end, to heaven. He finally sees the scene described here.
Plug this into your imagination: Our “heaven” (the sky, the sun, the moon) has been destroyed, right along with our earth. New ones have taken their place. There’s a lot of land, because the new earth doesn’t have an ocean. Looking up, we see a city coming down from the sky toward the earth. She’s the New Jerusalem – God’s Holy City – and somehow she looks like it’s her wedding day.
Think: Do you think Christians think too much or too little about heaven? What’s the point of imagining our eternal future?
Pray: Ask God to help you think about heaven in the healthiest possible way.
Do: Give yourself a half-hour sometime this week to do nothing but stoke your imagination about heaven and your future with God.