All Things New

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

--Revelation 21:5-7

One morning, I got myself up before dawn to go walking. As tired feet climbed the steep sloping road, the sun climbed a steep horizon of hills, and I felt the Lord reinforcing something he's been speaking to me through his word, "All things are being made new."

It started a few weeks ago when my daughter asked me, "Does God still create?"

Out of the mouth of babes. She asks all the right questions.

“Yes, Honey, God is always creating.”

A seed is planted in the ground, God sends rain to water the earth, he commands the sun to rise each day, the seed takes root, a shoot comes up from the soil, a tree grows, flowers bud on the stems, and fruit erupts on the tree.

A baby is born every four seconds in the world. Life unfurls in the span of a breath.

“Behold, I will do something new,
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.

--Isaiah 43:19 NASB

I remembered what the Lord had shown me during one of our hikes while visiting the family cabin in the mountains. I recalled the day that we found a creek running through an old burn area.

We had set out that day looking for a very old thing. A place of memories hidden away in the forest, preserved in timelessness. This is where an old rock stood as a monument of childhood. When they were kids, my husband and his sister would climb it like a thing of wonder. Fingers gripped the warm granite, history pulsing through flesh like a time machine humming through eons, yet remaining still.

The rock had been there as long as they could remember. As children, my husband and his sister would traverse the unmarked trail to cross over the creek, through the trees to a clearing, where the stone lay heavy on the earth. The conifers grew up around it like guardians marking time.

My eye swept up the length of the trees and I realized, these giants have been there almost as long as the monstrous stone itself. Standing beneath those aged bows I felt suddenly younger and more vibrant, like a babe among elders.

My husband had brought me there on one of our first trips to the family cabin. I remember standing in that very place in the forest and felt I was touching the untouchable. The pulsing heart of creation was keeping tempo to the rhythm of its Creator. Every breeze that passed through a million pine needles o'er head was a whisper of His breath, the same breath that hovered over the waters of a formless sea on that first day of creation.

CS Lewis wrote, “God is not a static thing — not even a person — but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”

The place where we found ourselves was a recent burn area, where a devastating fire had scorched the forest, and what remained were mostly fallen trees and a thick floor of pine needles and thorny cones. I had looked down at my feet to find a sapling stretching and craning its neck toward the sky. New life is always busting out of the grave.

Then from the depth of the quiet forest rhythm we heard the gurgle of a babbling brook. A stream was nearby. Walking only a hundred yards or so, we witnessed earth bearing green. The trees drank deeply, their roots dipping wildly into the rippling waters. All along the bank of the creek grew wildflowers, ivy, and oak. White butterflies fluttered around our heads as they hurried to gather sweetness. 

The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden, 
like a spring whose waters never fail.
--Isaiah 58:11 NIV

This year began for us like two pair of sandaled feet wondering in the desert. We did not know where we were headed or what we were walking into, but one thing was for certain, it was going to be a desert season.

So when you come out of the heat of a scorching season, it is a struggle. You thirst for living water to infuse power through your veins. You dig your roots down deep into solid ground. You outstretch those tired limbs and upspring through the soil. Your hope is like an ever-flowing spring. And you realize that what was dead will be made new again.

Because the things is, God never ever leaves us where we were. He is our creator, and his character never changes. He who creates something out of nothing has the power to create the new from the old. Life from death. We know that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away. All things have become new (2 Cor 5:17 NKJV).

God is constantly, always making things new.
He is even now creating and recreating.
Always making and remaking.
Always forming. Always working.
Never changing. Never fading. Never failing.
But ever moving, flowing and forming His creation.
He is a rhythm that rips the tide ashore and
Pushes the galaxies to the far reaches of space.
His blood trickled down that broken tree and
Resurrects dead bones to make
Once-and-for-all
Everything new.

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.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

--Revelation 21:5-7