The Circle of Life and Death

While visiting my son’s place, I loved to go to the park. Every day I hoped to catch a glimpse of a mother duck and her eight ducklings. One day I saw them again. After five weeks they had grown almost to their mother’s size.

Those ducklings reminded me of the circle of life and death. This cycle is quite obvious in the backwoods. For years a tall dead pine marked the edge of our cottage property. Then one day it fell. Soon another pine began growing in its place. Down the lake I recently spied a cedar tree growing several feet above the ground in the soil of a fallen tree.

Life begets death in this sin-cursed earth. How eager I am to live forever with God in the new heaven and new earth! There the redeemed will be of one mind—loving and serving God. The world, the flesh, and the devil will never be lurking in the shadows waiting to entice one to sin. All creation will rejoice and praise God forever.

I do not understand why some believers bought with the precious blood of Jesus look forward to utopia on this present earth. According to those people, life and death will still exist. Babies will still be born with a sin nature. Sure, Satan may be muzzled, but the flesh and worldly influences will still entice the unregenerate to sin. How can that world compare to the joyful realities in the new heaven and new earth?

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14, NIV).

I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking about the new heaven and the new earth, not this sin-cursed earth.