Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenges. Yesterday we read the story of how God intends to make all things new – including heaven, earth, and us!

Let’s think a little bit about a new earth…and our lives made new as well.

There are all kinds of signs of brokenness in our world and in our lives. Things we know to be wrong, not just because we heard a rule about it somewhere, but at deeper level. Why do we feel so deeply that we should live in a world without murder, rape, and where the smallest and weakest should be cared for?

Because we were made for that world. We weren’t made for a world of violence and death, but a world without those things.

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” (C.S. Lewis)

Heaven isn’t some strange, otherworldly, spacy reality that will seem foreign. It should be the most familiar, fitting setting possible for human existence. It will be like finally returning home after a lifetime away.

Such a beautiful vision – sorrow and pain are no more. Every tear wiped away. No mourning, crying, or pain will survive.

We see lots of examples in day to day life of life experience that won’t survive this transition. Lots of people point to cancer, violence, unjust deaths as examples.

But we can also catch glimpses of the new reality. God actually wants people to start practicing life in his kingdom now. He invites us to life now as if heaven is here – in the process showing others a little bit of heaven on earth.

I saw one beautiful sign of the kingdom the other day – as I walked past a homeless man, I heard a woman nearby strike up a beautiful conversation with him. They spoke as if the pain and need in his life had disappeared. It hadn’t, of course, and in this present world it likely isn’t a simple fix. But for a moment, I felt like I saw a vision of saints relating in a world without need, pain, sickness or death.

Question: What parts of our world do you think will disappear in the new earth? What glimpses of the new earth do you already see?