God's Open Secret--May 22, 2025

God's Open Secret--May 22, 2025

"And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.' Also he said, 'Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true'." (Revelation 21:5)

There are some things about the future you just can't find out until you get there.

Everybody says you can't understand what it feels like to love your children until you hold them in your arms for the first time, and at the same time, that you don't really know what it means to be tired until you have to go work after being up all night with an infant needing bottles and diaper changes every few hours--and they're right.

They tell you that you don't know what it's like getting old until you wake up with joints that crack and feet that are sore from the moment they hit the floor in the morning; only then do you learn to have empathy for others with creaking knees and aching backs.

And of course, you don't really know what worry means until you send your child or grandchild out into the world without you in some new way--whether the first time they go to school by themselves, the first time they go out to play with friends in the neighborhood without you following right behind, or when they move out and go onto new adventures in adulthood.

There are all these nuggets of insight that others can say to us until they are blue in the face, but which we won't really "get" until we experience it for ourselves. We might think we understand what others are telling us based on their own lives and wisdom, but sometimes we simply cannot understand until we arrive in that future moment when their past experience becomes our present-tense reality. And maybe there's no way around that--we just have to live enough to get to the point where we can see for ourselves what others had been trying to tell us all along.

But then there are times when someone gives us a promise about the future, and it makes all the difference for how we face the moment right before us. When the person in front of your eyes commits to loving you "in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, as long as we both shall live," it is meant to change your life now. You respond in light of the promised future that your spouse-to-be is telling you about, even if all that person can tell you for sure about it is, "I will be there with you, through it all."  

When the person interviewing you says, "You're hired--you'll start on Monday!" and shows you around the office, it is a promise about the future that very much affects how you understand the present moment.  Or when the bank's loan officer tells you that you've been approved for the home loan and you'll be able to live in a house of your own, it changes your outlook right away--in ways that are both sobering (like the weight of monthly mortgage payments) and deeply hopeful (as you picture planting flowers in your own yard rather than renting an apartment).

So here's the question: when God tells John, the writer of Revelation, "See, I am making all things new," as many of us heard from this verse on this past Sunday, what are we to make of it?  Is this one of those "You won't really understand until you get there" kind of pronouncements, or is this a statement about the future that changes our present understanding immediately?  Is this a mysterious oracle, whose meaning is hidden until the end of time, or a public promise meant to give us assurance we can stake our lives on now, like a marriage vow?

Well, I think the cat's out of the bag with God's follow-up instruction to John: "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."  That is, God doesn't intend this to be a cryptic or coded message like the nebulous predictions of Nostradamus, nor does it seem like God believes the information will be wasted on John until some future date.  It seems, rather, that God intends for John to trust the word that all things will be made new, and for John to tell everybody else the news.  If the rest of the waiting world thinks its future is a secret, it's an open secret--God has been telling us all along that at the last, all things will be made new.  God tells us so that we can count on it; God has John write it down so that we will live our present lives in light of that promise.

If that's true, then what difference will it make for us to take this promise seriously?  How do we live our lives differently now if God's promise is, "I am making all things new"?  

I don't think God's intention is that we can trash the world we are living in now, simply because we think God will replace it one day--that's not the sense you get from John here.  It's not said with a shrug, as if to say, "Don't bother taking care of the world you have, the soil you grow your crops in, the air you breathe, or the water cycle that sustains your lives, since God will make everything new one day."  Just the opposite, actually.  I am convinced that the thrust is more like, "Because God is committed to renewing and rejuvenating all of creation, we can participate in God's work in some small but real way every time we take action to restore creation, too, here and now."  I am convinced the promise is that God will not let all of our acts of waste, depletion, and destruction get the last word; but in the meantime, if we want to be on the same page with God's priorities, we'll spend our energy to cleanse and renew the world in our own ways right now.  

When I spill spaghetti sauce on my dress shirt out a restaurant and my wife says, "We can use that special spot treatment detergent when we get home," it doesn't mean I should dump more sauce on myself right now and justifying it by saying, "She'll take care of it for me later, I guess." Rather, I dab some ice water from my glass into my napkin and onto my shirt to try and at least get up some of the tomato sauce--I am, after all, still out at dinner right now, and I can at least try to prevent the stain from setting or becoming a bigger distraction while I finish my rigatoni.  The promise of future restoration doesn't lead me to ignore the problem in the present, but to attend to it now, even if in a small and partial way for the moment, in light of the assurance that there's a bottle of Shout! I can use to help get the shirt clean waiting at home later on.  The future is what keeps me from giving up on the present situation in that case, as a matter of fact.

I think maybe that's the bottom line here in Revelation 21, too.  God assures John, "I am making all things new," not to give an excuse for apathy to stop caring about the world or its suffering in the present, but just the opposite.  God's promised future is what keeps us from giving up hope in the present.  It is the very reason we find the nerve and courage and energy to keep caring, to keep restoring, to keep loving, and to keep working for the restoration of all things and the renewal of all creation.  If it seems like the message of new creation is a secret, it's an open one--and it's one that God invites us both to trust and to tell, so that all people will know where the universe is headed... and so that we can live our lives now in light of that future.

Today, then, don't give up hope.  Where there is good work to be done to heal... to mend... to do good... to build up... to love... and to serve, do it.  Do it, not because the universe is doomed if we don't do enough, but exactly because God has promised to renew this creation, and God isn't giving up on it. Or any of us.

Lord God, give us the hope and energy to care for the world you have made, because we believe you will renew all things in this world in your own good time.