“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” Isaiah 65:17
 

For me, there are some of the most hopeful words in Scripture. They are echoed in second Peter, “according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth” and in Revelation 21, “then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” I like to think of the “Kingdom coming” as all of humankind each day becoming a little more like the vision Jesus expressed in the Beatitudes.

The hopefulness of “a new heaven and a new earth” seems so much more attractive than the fatalism expressed in some parts of our society today. We hear things like: “Well, I have always been impatient (or short-tempered, moody, etc.), that’s just the way I am.” Or “there have always been wars and there always will be.”   Why do we let fatalism cast such a dark shadow over us?

Henri Nouwen wrote, “Faith is the deep trust that God’s love is stronger than all the anonymous powers of the world and can transform us from victims of darkness into servants of light.”

I become excited when I think of myself and the world being transformed little by little each day and evolving into the fulfillment of the “new heaven and new earth.”