“See, I am making all things new.” “These words are trustworthy and true.” We read these words in scripture, which we believe to be the word of God, but when we look in the world around us and see war, oppression, degradation in every corner of the earth, it is hard for us to conceive of their truth. When we hear people taking every opportunity to tear down those who disagree with them, we wonder how it can be that all things are being made new. When we find the ravages of poverty, racism, religious fanaticism continuing to plague humankind, we don’t recognize anything new making a difference. In our own personal lives, when we experience fear, anxiety, grief, desolation, it doesn’t feel like all things are being made new.

On the other hand, once we have experienced the depths of despair over the situations of our lives and find that underneath it all are the everlasting arms of God’s love upholding us, we come to realize that our Creator is truly making all things new. That’s when we recognize what redemption is all about, when we know what it is to be “in the hand of God” as our lesson from the Apocrypha puts it. God’s making all things new was the experience of the psalmist when he said, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning,” (Ps.30:5a) with the light of God shining in our lives in a new way. When Lazarus heard Jesus call him out of the tomb, he found that God was indeed making all things new for him. Julian of Norwich trusted that God was making all things new when she testified that “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” no matter that the Black Death was hovering around her door. Richard Rohr, in his new book, The Naked Now, says the knowledge of such truth is based on “the authority of those who have suffered and have emerged from the belly of the whale, transformed.” (P.64)

Here and now, regardless of what we see around us, God is making all things new, creating, redeeming, sanctifying, transforming us and all creation. These words are trustworthy and true!