God Is Making "All Things New"!

Christians serve a God who is making “all things new.”


In the “Revelation,” the Apostle John contrasts the new heaven and the new earth with the old heaven and old earth that, he says, will pass away. He sees a new city, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven prepared for her God like a bride coming down the aisle, adorned for her husband.


When the Apostle John was writing the words of Revelation, he wrote in Greek. I think it was William Barclay who reminded me that John had two choices for the word we translate into English as “new.” The simplest was “neos,” which means “new in time,” “most recent.” We still use that word in many of our own. For example, a neonatal unit in a hospital is the part of the hospital caring specifically for newborns. But “neos” is not the word the apostle uses.


When he records the words of the King of the universe, saying, “I am making all things new,” the word John uses is “kaine,” which means “new in quality.” It’s not just the latest thing, it’s the best thing.


On the desk near the computer in my study sits an old Underwood Number Five typewriter. Both machines can help me put words on a page. But when I compare that old Underwood Number Five typewriter and my computer, I’m not just comparing something that is old chronologically with something that is much newer. Yes, the computer is newer in “age,” but it is also a “new thing,” new in quality and far better.


For about ten minutes after I got my first computer, I was like some other old fossils I’ve heard talk about writing books or columns or sermons, who said they just felt that actually writing with a pen on paper was something they’d want to continue to do even if they had a computer available. There was, they said, just something about putting the pen in hand and writing on the paper that was integral to their writing. For ten minutes, I thought there might be something to that, and then I started lining up words on the computer. Now I think I’d be nuts to prefer scratch outs and mark-outs, crumpled up pages lying around my chair.


Not everything “new” is better, but I admit that the computer is better than the old Underwood Number Five. It is not just “neos,” new in time, it is “kaine,” new—new in quality.


Christians, of all people, should understand this. For years, God’s people had been offering animal sacrifice, following ritual regulations, but when the real Lamb came, the “Lamb who was slain,” all of that was no longer needed. The perfect Lamb had come and the perfect sacrifice was made once for all for all time.


When Jesus comes into this world, lives for us, dies for us, and is raised to new life, he brings all who love him and follow him in faith into that “kaine” new, new in quality, life, and we relate to God in what we call the “new” covenant, ratified through the blood of his Son, on the basis of faith. That covenant is “kaine” new. It’s completely new and unimaginably better than the old.


Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

For Those Who Trust in God, There Is Always Hope

The son of some dear friends of mine lost his battle last week. The family feels defeated.


It had been a long battle. For two decades, this young man had fought a battle with drugs. One night this week his much-abused body gave up. And now his family, long used to dealing with the pain of the battle and a terrible kind of grief, is left to deal with grief of yet another sort.

I ache for them.

It’s hard enough to watch a loved one being torn apart in life. But as long as there is life, there is at least perhaps a glimmer of hope. And now?

Now I long for them to know that there is still hope.

The Psalmist assures us that “weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” At all times of death, tears overtake us for many nights until, one day, the slightest glimmer of light begins to shine through clouds that have seemed impenetrably dark. There will always be an empty place, but after what seems like an eternity, one day we will wake up and our first thought will not be of our loved one’s absence; it will be again of what remains to us that is still good.

Death always hurts. Healing always takes time.

But what is more difficult about a situation such as this, a situation sadly repeated in our world every day, is that people often wonder if there really is any room for ultimate hope.

Yes, there is! Because God is good and because God is love, there is always room for hope.

I’m not a “universalist.” God paid a terrible price to save us. It hurts him more than we can imagine if we refuse to accept his love. Free will is his gift to us, and the choice he gives us is real. Through his tears, God will allow us to make the wrong one.

But just because a person fights a terrible battle with obvious evil for decades does not mean he has turned his back on God. In fact, he may see far more clearly than most of us that his only hope is God’s love and God’s power.

The good news is not that God saves good people. In fact, the more spiritually mature a person is, the more he realizes how bad he is.

We are not saved by how good we are. Certainly, not by how good we look. We who look religious may not be “trying” half as hard as a person who looks far less shiny.

The gospel is not what we often think. It is not that God saves good people and bad people are lost. We are all bad.

The good news of the Gospel is that God saves those who trust his Son. No matter how many times we fall and how terribly we fail. As long as we trust.

We are not good. The best sons in our world can go terribly astray. The very best parents can feel like failures. And any of us who think we can afford to be haughty are blind and headed for a fall.

But God had a perfect Son who paid the price for us all. God is the best Father. For all who trust Him and look up, from a pit or even from a pew, there is always hope, here and hereafter.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

The Birds Are Singing and the Grass Is Turning Green

I hear that it’s beautiful outside today, though I’ve not had much chance to find out for myself just yet. Lately, any day wind gusts are below 50 mph might easily pass for beautiful.

Yes, the birds are singing. The grass is turning green. And spring is in the air.

It’s really depressing.

You know what all this means, don’t you?

It means that though you’ve been able to take some wicked pleasure in the fact that all your friends with those verdant and hyperactive blue grass/fescue mix lawns have been mowing for a month now, while you were doing something useful like reading a good book, drinking coffee, or riding your motorcycle . . . well, now even your trusty Bermuda grass lawn is giving up and turning green. And that means you, too, will be chained for half a day a week to a lawn mower for the next several months.

Though I bear fruit trees no ill will, I’d sort of been hoping for a late cold spell to set my yard back. Alas, it’s almost time to start setting out plants. And that means dragging out the garden hoses, watering, weeding, weed-eating, etc.

I really like the way a nice green well-kept lawn looks. I like to grow plants. More accurately, I like to watch God grow the plants we both try to water.

I love the way a freshly mown lawn looks and smells. I’m still basking in the glow from the request one young lady made a year or two ago. She and her fiance (strangers to us) had driven by, and then turned around, and she asked if they could have some engagement pics taken in our yard. I’m still amazed. I can’t believe she could drive so well, obviously blind with no seeing eye dog at the wheel. No one will be asking to take pictures in our yard this week, I’m quite sure.

I know. Before the season’s over, the yard won’t look all that bad. It’ll look best right after each mowing. But that’s what bugs me. “Each” mowing.

When I fix something that’s broken, I like to think it might stay fixed for a nanosecond or two. Once all this springtime green machine really gets going, my lawn stays “fixed” for barely a week, then here we go again.

Okay, I admit it.

Once we get into the yard slave routine, I really do take some pleasure in the green grass and colorful flowers. I like to flop down in the green grass and look at clouds with my granddaughters.

It’s getting started that’s hard. Each year, I get dragged to the lawn mower and the garden hose kicking and screaming. Winter is so winsome. Fireplaces. Hot tea. Sweaters. Snow. Christmas. Books.

It’s not all wasted time. I end up writing sermons and columns in my head while I chase the lawn mower.

Life is always precious and beauty is never a waste. Our black-clad Puritan ancestors were whistling in the wind. God’s color and joy always win in the end. And that I like.


Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.