Last week our lectionary passage offered a taste of heaven, specifically in regard to marriage. (You can read it here if you missed that one.) Today we delve further into what a new heaven and a new earth will be like according to Isaiah. In Isaiah’s words, a new earth is promised that will be a state of being where the children of God can look forward to living together in complete peace and harmony. That’s something we need right now!

Isaiah described a time of social transformation with equitable justice, spiritual transformation that will usher in an unprecedented closeness and intimacy with the very-present God, and ecological transformation that will result in predators eating and living together in comfortable companionship.

Isaiah 65 (Common English Bible)

Look! I’m creating a new heaven and a new earth:
    past events won’t be remembered;
    they won’t come to mind.
¹⁸ Be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I’m creating,
    because I’m creating Jerusalem as a joy
    and her people as a source of gladness.
¹⁹ I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad about my people.
    No one will ever hear the sound of weeping or crying in it again.

Joy will abound and long life is promised. Crying and weeping will be a thing of the past.

²⁰ No more will babies live only a few days,
    or the old fail to live out their days.
The one who dies at a hundred will be like a young person,
    and the one falling short of a hundred will seem cursed.

This new earth will see the eradication of theft and oppression. No longer will people work for the benefit of the powers that would take the products of their efforts away. Does this mean no more taxes?? Bring it on!

²¹ They will build houses and live in them;
    they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²² They won’t build for others to live in,
    nor plant for others to eat.
Like the days of a tree will be the days of my people;
    my chosen will make full use of their handiwork.
²³ They won’t labor in vain,
    nor bear children to a world of horrors,
    because they will be people blessed by the Lord,
    they along with their descendants.
²⁴ Before they call, I will answer;
    while they are still speaking, I will hear.

Just stop for a moment and think about what it will be like for God to be so close to you that all you have to do is start a sentence and he will finish it. All you have to do is reach out to him and find that he is already there. This kind of access will be startling and beautiful.

²⁵ Wolf and lamb will graze together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
    but the snake—its food will be dust.
They won’t hurt or destroy at any place on my holy mountain,
    says the Lord.

Well, you have to feel a little sorry for the snake, but the violence of animal-on-animal feeding frenzies will cease to exist, and species will live together as one. As will people. So these artificial constructs of “us-versus-them” and the prejudice against races that aren’t like you will finally go away.

The holy mountain of God will be a new Eden. Are you ready?

Normandy