“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
Someone once asked me, “If your tears could talk, what would they say?” I spoke on behalf of the hot, swollen drops: “It’s not supposed to be this way.” He said, “How can I pray for you?” I feel childish when I ask again for something I’ve been promised already. It feels impatient. I say it anyway: “I just want God to come back.”
This brief world is sick with oppression, violence, and injustice. Our bodies were not made to be plagued by disease or mental illness. Our lives were not created to be infected with death; all my grief and groaning is only evidence of this. My hope is evidence of this, too. Hope asks me to imagine a world consistent with its original purpose. When I do, I risk my finite mind to frustration. I can’t even imagine the redemption I hope for — we’re so far from it now. Nevertheless, I try. I bring all my questions and visions and misimagined scenarios. I spin huge, colorful hypotheticals from the thin shadows of this world.
“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth; The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.”
I have so many questions for God.
When all things are made new, will there be time? Surely not as we know it. Will there be clocks, and how will we feel when we check them? What will my body look like?
What will I do with God? I like to imagine us making art together at a wooden table, our brushes dripping mixed pigment in a frenzy of endless inspiration.
Will I still love the rough world, the dappled things?
I’ll admit I love fat manufactured blueberries, pinching the points of their crowns between my teeth, pulling the dark blue down. Potato chips in wild, unnatural flavors. I love how the scent of lavender makes a character of itself in aerosol cans and perfume bottles. When God comes back to shake this place, what of our brilliant, vain creations will remain?
What will angels look like? When I think about heavenly hosts, I think about my Mama in the hour before a party starts. When I was younger, I didn’t know that host means a mob, a multitude. I just thought they were party-throwers like Mama, always preparing the way for some new guest. Running around, turning on the lamps and fluffing pillows. Straightening the carpet. Maybe they’re sweeping crumbs from gold floors, or lingering by heaven’s gate so they can open it just before guests have to knock on it themselves.
How will we experience joy? Maybe the arms of its tall letters curve towards its Greek ancestor, chara, which comes from the word for grace. Here and now, God’s grace is my hope. But when hope’s fulfillment is realized, God’s grace will be my joy. One of my favorite authors once wrote: "Love is holy because it is like grace; the worthiness of its object is never really what matters." So it is with joy. It will be the work of our hands that drum and dance and shift flowers into rhythmic arrangements. Grief will be lost from the phrase "it is finished," and our joy will be greater than an artist's as he colors his canvas with a final stroke of acrylic.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
I can hardly believe that the end of my story is to love and sing and wonder forever.
I’ll be Maria frolicking through the Swiss Alps, her voice swelling with delight: “The hills are alive!” And they will be, with grass sweeping vibrant green beneath my feet. I’ll be Matisse with paint-laden brushes striking red shadows beneath naked undersides. Bonheur de Vivre — the joy of life! I’ll grow flowers from blue acrylic, draw one hand in another and send them off dancing in a circle to wind and music. I’ll be a superfan in the front row, shaking my hair wildly, the air thick with blinking neon and bass guitar.
No, better than that.
I try to build eternity with only the crude tools of this world, but what I hope for extends beyond imagination.
I’ll be an adopted child, finally seeing the face of my Father who raised me in perfect love until this very moment. My Father who has seen every tear roll off my chin and down the sink. He will say, “You don’t need to cry anymore.” His voice might be matter-of-fact and without pity: “There’s no need for tears here. What you cried for was accomplished a long time ago so that you could have it now.”
Maybe I’ll put my hands out in front of me and examine their spotless skin and feel a kind of strength pulsing into the tips of my fingers. Maybe I’ll look up at God in surprise and He’ll smile as if to say: “See? You are like me.” And if I still don’t understand, he’ll take my perfect hand in His, and I won’t tell one apart from the other.
I hardly know how to imagine it.
Footnotes:
Romans 8:22 (NIV)
Isaiah 65:17-18 (NIV)
Robinson, Marilynne. 2006. Gilead. London, England: Virago Press.
Revelation 21:4 (NIV)