Rector’s Reflections
Wednesday 17th July 2024
See, I am making all things new
Yesterday, I began a fresh series of reflections based on one of the great verses from the Book of Revelation: “And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new” (Chapter 21, verse 5).
In this verse, God (who is the “one seated on the throne”) proclaims that He is continually at work, to bring about new beginnings. In today’s reflections, I wish to share some further thoughts on this work of God, focussing on the relationship between God’s work and our human experience of time.
As human beings, when we think about the work of new beginnings, we often look back in history to some particularly significant event and regard this event as marking the beginning of a new start. For example, students of Modern History might look back to the French Revolution or the Industrial Revolution and say that this was when we began to see something new happening in our society or our world. In other words, the process of change is seen to have a definitive beginning. It can be similar in our own lives as human beings: we can look over our lives and feel that things began to change in significant ways as the result of some particular event or experience. I should add that not everyone experiences a specific turning point in their lives: for some people, life is experienced as a gradual and continuous process of development, and it is hard to point to any specific moments of change.
We can also place new beginnings at some point in the future. As individuals, we can look ahead for a change to take place in the months or years ahead. And as societies, we can dream dreams that one day, things will be better. We might be fortunate and experience a hint of this wonderful future in the here and now, but in essence the desired new beginnings are something for which we will have to wait.
So when it comes to God, has God’s gift of a new beginning already come, or is it still to come? Do we look to some event in the past, or do we look to the future, for some event which is yet to be?
The answer is neither. God’s work of new beginnings is continuous and eternal. God did not say, “See, I have made all things new” – referring to something He has done at some point in the past. Neither did he point to the future, saying “See, I will make all things new”. No. God focussed on the continuous present: “See, I am making all things new”.
This provides us with both a challenge and a comfort. The comfort is the knowledge that we have not missed God’s work of new beginnings, because we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. God is always at work, in every place and at every point in time. We don’t have to go on a long and arduous journey to try and find God. God is already with us. But this also provides us with a challenge. It is easy for us to forget that God is already at work in our own lives and in our communities, bringing about new beginnings. This means that even when things seem desperate and there appears to be no hope, God is at work. There are new beginnings to be found even at the darkest times in our lives. But are we prepared to look for them? Are we prepared to see God at work in the midst of our difficulties?
Part of our problem as human beings is that we like to tell God not only when He is to act, but how He is to act. We shall look at this in tomorrow’s reflections.