“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and
the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven
from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”
Revelation 21:1-2
The first time I read these verses, I whined, “Oh no, you mean in the
new heavens and new earth there won’t be any sea? Heaven’s
centerpiece will be a city? I’ve always preferred country landscapes,
not cities. It doesn’t sound very appealing!”
C. S. Lewis long ago addressed my fears when he wrote:
Our notion of heaven involves perpetual negations: no food, no drink,
no sex, no time… Against all these, to be sure, we set one positive: the
vision and enjoyment of God… The negatives have an unfair advantage.
We feel that the vision of God will come not to fulfill but to destroy our
nature. We must not allow this to happen. We must believe that every
negation will be only the reserve side of a fulfilling.*
I agree with Lewis. My desire for the new earth to include oceans and
country landscapes is so limited by my human perceptions. Heaven
won’t be less than my natural experience here on earth, it will be more.
And it will be far better!
How? Lewis sheds more light on this. “Our natural experiences are like
penciled lines on flat paper. If our natural experiences vanish in the risen
life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape;
not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes
invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the
shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.”
I believe, Lord, that heaven will be more, not less, of what I enjoy on earth.
Make that fact come alive for me today.
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*Lewis, C.S., “The Business of Heaven,” The Inspirational Writings of C. S. Lewis, Inspiration Press, 1984, New York
Pearls of Great Price. 362-63.
