Storytelling is at the heart of Christianity. God is a storyteller. We are either enraptured by and absorbed into this story, or we reckon it repugnant and run from the “Once upon a time”. Adam and Eve ate the fruit, bringing death into the world. Yet, in the primordial darkness, the first note of a grand symphony rang: Eve’s offspring would crush the serpent’s head. And two millennia before our time, a baby was born in Bethlehem. He would die and rise again, and in rising, as Paul notes in the passage above, He would secure our resurrection from the dead. In Christ was the death of death and the guarantee of life after death. For this reason, as the hymn says, “our hope springs eternal”. In this article, I seek to focus on one part of this story, namely our eternal hope.
We will begin our brief journey by contemplating what heaven is. It is where God “will wipe away every tear from [his people’s] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Heaven is a great city with “no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:9-23). “By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, its gates shall never be shut by day”, and “there will be no night there” (Revelation 21:24-26). There shall be a “river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” and the “tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.” (Revelation 21:1-2). We shall behold “[God’s] face” and “reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:4-5).
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