I make all things new

Listen closely to the words from the throne, because a single syllable carries the whole hope. The One seated there does not say, behold, I make all new things, as though the old order were so much rubbish to be hauled off and replaced with strangers. He says, behold, I make all things new. The same things. The very things. Made new. And then, as if to underline that this is not a poet's flourish, He gives an instruction: write it down, for these words are faithful and true. The promise is being certified, notarized, set in the record.

This is the trajectory of every upheaval God authors. Isaiah heard it too — new heavens and a new earth, so wholly renewed that the former griefs would not even come to mind. But notice that even there the canvas is heaven and earth, this heaven, this earth, not their replacement by some other thing. The shaking is severe, and it is real, and from inside it looks a great deal like destruction. But the destination is not the scrap heap. It is renewal. The wreckage is not discarded; it is the very material the renewing hand takes up and remakes.

There is a lie that whispers in the worst of an upheaval, and it is this: you are being scrapped. Not refined, not rebuilt — scrapped, written off, headed for the heap so that something else can take your place. It is a plausible lie, because the early phases of any shaking really do feel like demolition with nothing on the other side. But it cannot survive the words from the throne. He does not make all new things. He makes all things new.

Which means the life the upheaval seems to be ruining is not being thrown away; it is being remade. The marriage, the faith, the calling, the self you fear is past saving — these are exactly the things the promise lays hold of. God is not in the business of discarding people and starting over with better stock. If He is in your shaking, its trajectory bends toward new, and the you that comes out the far side is not a stranger who replaced you. It is you, made new.