Anticipating the new creation
The church should reawaken its hunger for beauty at every level. This is essential and urgent. It is central to Christian living that we should celebrate the goodness of creation, ponder its present brokenness, and, insofar as we can, celebrate in advance the healing of the world, the new creation itself. Art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom can all be explored in new ways.
The point is this. The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions. But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold—and yet if you’d never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn’t believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed.
Perhaps art can show something of that, can glimpse the future possibilities pregnant within the present time. It is like a chalice: again, beautiful to look at, pleasing to hold, but waiting to be filled with the wine which, itself full of sacramental possibilities, gives the chalice its fullest meaning. Perhaps art can help us to look beyond the immediate beauty with all its puzzles, and to glimpse that new creation which makes sense not only of beauty but of the world as a whole, and ourselves within it.
–N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
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It is a nice composition but totally implausable because of the following verse:
Isa 65:17 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
KJV
And repeated as a done deal in:
Rev 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
KJV
I see no need to amplify on Gods word. He said it. It was done, even before the foundations of this world were laid. I’m just looking forward to His Glory and Honour with all of His creation. It will surpass anything man can think up or cartoonists can imagine. Heaven will be, in a word, HEAVEN!
This a challenging and hope filled composition. Imagine a world of faithful followers of Christ – hungry for all the beauty and majesty of God that can be revealed in this world. People aggressively pushing back the broken-ness and seeking to manifest God’s beauty in this world whether it be by art or love, kindness, faithfullness – by every fruit of the beautiful Spirit of God living in this world through the actions of the church. Go after it. Sieze it for the Kingdom. And squeeze every bit of beauty you can out of every moment – out of every relationship – out of every corner of the earth that God brings you to – make it your business that God’s beauty be manifest in it – today. Forever starts now.
I totally understand where this post comes from. I have been at church and seen people lifting their Holy hands to the Lord but intimacy wasnt there. Maybe it was I that was lacked intimacy with God but I believe that church is the one place where I can be taught how to be intimate with God. If I am unable to spend time alone with Him during the week, I run to church to catch that glimse of Him that I lost during the week. My hunger should be fed so I can be able to discover the undiscovered beauty that is hidden in Christ that can only be uncovered in His house. Yes, there is personal worship that’s a lifestyle but there is corporate worship that unveils the beauty that lies in worhiping Him as a Father. I long for that day when I walk into church and feel the intimacy that He longs for from His church. Personally I will seek that intimacy but it would be great to just go to church and fall on the ground as a church purely worship Him with a child like attitude.
I enjoy watching the worship network on daystar in the early mornings, it is uplifting as part of my devotional time. I would like to make a suggestion, would if some of the worship videos, just had the sound of nature along with scripture, like the sound of waterfalls, birds, bugs, and other sounds like the wind. I find that very peaceful and soothing, Jim
Imagine there was a channel that played the creation scenes with scriptures 24/7 !!!!! Wow