“But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens
and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
2 Peter 3:13
I probably have a darker personality than most people, though you might not guess it from meeting me.
This is the inner dialogue I live with:
My wife wanted to get cats, and one of my first thoughts was, “Saying goodbye to a pet in 10 years is going to suck.”
We found out we were pregnant a few months ago and, admittedly, one of my first thoughts was “don’t get excited — you might have another miscarriage.”
I hear people get excited about a new organization or hope for a movement that is trying to make people’s lives better, and what first comes to mind is that most of these things fail outright within months or a couple years. My next thought is of organizations and movements that lived long enough to accomplish something only to be corrupted by something else, whether personal financial corruption or having the cause drift and creating new problems.
And if it’s a particularly dark day for me, I start thinking about how genuinely hopeful some of the early revolutionaries in Russia must have been before the birth of the Soviet Union. Tens of millions of deaths later …
While most people get swept up in the glorious beginnings of things, I think of their inevitable end. All things in this current “heavens and earth” are corrupted from their beginning and so are without ultimate hope.
And that is why 2 Peter 3:13 matters so much to me. Because in Christ, I know that ultimately even my dour predictions of the disappointing ends of things will be redeemed. Christ has taken upon Himself my sin, and your sin, and the sin and corruption of the whole world so that He might make it new. The end is near. And in the end, one day, Christ will complete the work of making new He began at the cross. Christ is our hope, and He is the beginning that has no end.
David Olson
Latest posts by David Olson (see all)
- A New Beginning in Christ - October 12, 2018