“A river brings joy to the city of our God, the sacred home of the Most High. God dwells in that city; it cannot be destroyed. From the very break of day, God will protect it. The nations are in chaos, and their kingdoms crumble!
God’s voice thunders, and the earth melts! The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress.”
Revelation 22 has been one of my favorite Bible passages in the past year. It describes God’s coming kingdom, and it tells of a river flowing through the center of the city. Along the river, fruit trees grow. These are no ordinary trees — they contain medicine that will heal the nations. Today’s passage in Psalm 46 also tells about this river, running through a city that cannot be destroyed. It is a picture of a world where I would like to live.
These verses convey a world of chaos: kingdoms collapsing, the melting of earth. We are currently waiting for God to come in full force to defend his world and his people, ravaged by evil for too long. But God is not a destroyer, he is a healer. His river will restore the nations in chaos. The melting of the earth will be more like a refining than a terrorizing destruction. God’s river will heal the brokenness of our world and his new heaven and new earth will be a place we can thrive.
Here’s your freedom for today: God’s healing work is beyond your imagination. We have a lot of theories about heaven or the end days. Some of it comes from biblical passages, some is purely imagined. We do not know how God will restore, we simply know he will. We do not understand God’s new heaven and new earth, we only know that he is in the process of making them. If your heart is crying out for healing today, imagine yourself sitting by his river. Take a drink and let its supernatural medicine work its way deep into your soul. Then let go of this image, realizing that God’s healing work is even greater than anything you can imagine.