Just Right World

Antioch Christian Fellowship

Revelation 21:22-22:5

May 13, 2007

Goldilocks went for a walk in the forest.  She came upon a house.  She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.  At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge.  Goldilocks was hungry.  She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.   “This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed.  So she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.  “This porridge is too cold,” she said.  So she tasted the last bowl of porridge.  “Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said happily and she ate it all up.

Goldilock’s search for the “just right” continues to find the chair that is “just right.”  Then the bed that is “just right.”

By the time she finds the “just right” bed, Goldilocks is very tired, so she falls peacefully asleep.  It sounds lovely, finding the “just right” place to rest.  Of course, it can be deceiving, especially when we rest in the place that seems “just right,” but really isn’t.

Goldilocks was looking for something.  She thought she had found it for a while because she found comfort in Baby Bear’s bed.  Just when she finds the “just right” world, Goldilocks is rudely awakened to discover that it was not “just right” after all.  The growling of the owners of the house awaken her.  Terrified, Goldilocks screams for help, jumps up and runs out of the room, into the forest, never to return to the home of the three bears again.  The comfort that she enjoyed was real, but temporary. 

We read in Acts 14, the people of Lystra (Acts 14:8-18) thought they had found the “just right” world too.  Their friend who had been lame from birth and never walked, leaped up and began walking at Paul’s word.  The people were amazed.  They thought their gods had come to them in the form of humans.  Imagine that.  The priest of the temple of Zeus brought bulls and garlands to the city gates, he and the crowds demanded to offer sacrifices to them.   Paul and Barnabas are disappointed that the people have missed the point.  They rebuke the people, saying, “Why are doing these things?  We are only men, like you.  It is not us, but God who has done this.  There is a living God who made the heaven, the earth and everything in it, including you.  He wants you to know him, be in relationship with him.  Turn away from the worthless things you now worship. 

Goldilocks and the people of Lystra were looking for the “just right” world.  They are not so different from us.  While we walk, live and breathe in this world, we grow weary, we grow ill, we grow depressed and we know somehow deep within us that is not as we are intended to be so we look for the “just right” something we can see and touch to heal us. 

But because we are temporary, those things we can verify with our transient senses are also temporary.  It is only those things we know and yet cannot verify with our senses, cannot verify even with our reason, that make any lasting difference.

As we pass through this transient world, God gives to us glimpses of the eternal, glimpses of how he cares for us, his beloved.  Goldilocks did need rest and a bed was provided, the people of Lystra did need healing and healing was provided.  While these transient signs can be detected with our transient senses they are only pointers to the greater reality.  God offers to us what we cannot touch or see, so that our existence, our time here, might be larger than this small world.  If we do not attribute that which we can detect with our senses to God, how can we possibly attribute that which we cannot detect to him?

God gives to us today such a picture.  It is a picture so vast, our pitiful words struggle to describe it; our tiny imaginations wrestle with it.  He gives us this picture in Holy Scripture so that we might see and touch today with our eternal senses what He has provided for us.

Chapter 21 of Revelation describes the scene of the renovation of the world.  John states in the first verse of Revelation 21, “. . I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist. . .”  God’s new creation is a place of exquisite beauty.  The new Jerusalem is described as a shining city on a hill created of jewels so dazzling, I wonder, will we be able to take our eyes from it?  The entry gates are each of one single pearl.  Pearls are not like the other jewels, created from geo-pressures and minerals of the earth, but pearls are created as a result of the suffering of a living creature.

John tells us in Rev. 21:22, there is no temple in the city.  We recall from Matthew 27:50-51 when Jesus died, “the curtain of temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”  In Christ, there is no longer any barrier between us and God.  In this renovated world described by John, there is no longer any special place for God to reside, as the whole world is clean, holy; each person who resides there is clean, holy, worthy to walk with the Lord.  Each person has walked through the gates of pearl.

There is perpetual light, provided by the glory, the shining face of God.  Knowing from the beginning that He had a better plan for us, God who protected us from eating of the tree of life and living forever in this corrupted, evil world, (Gen. 3:22) shows us again, that tree in this new world, flourishing beside the water of life, producing fruit perpetually.

Life, as we know it, wiped out, replaced with what we have never known, a place where God himself can and will live permanently with us.  A place where death, mourning, weeping, suffering, and pain do not exist.  The things we spend our lives avoiding are unknown.  It is no wonder it is a picture so hard to believe.  It is the “just right” world, the place we are all looking for, but it simply doesn’t exist yet.  It is not a place we can see or touch, but it is the place we hold in our hearts as more true, than anything our pitiful senses can detect.

There is a saying, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”  Those wandering roads to anywhere can keep us very busy.  We can spend a lifetime on them with never a moment to ponder if we are on the “just right” road this time.  But then, something happens, we are rudely awakened from our sleep to discover that we took the wrong road again.  Sometimes, we begin to wonder, is there really a “just right” road that actually leads to somewhere we want to stay? 

Holy Scripture is clear.  Yes, there is a way, but only one that satisfies our search.  Jesus claims to be God in human flesh.  He has told us he has gone to prepare a place for us.  He has given us a picture of that place. 

He says, all it takes is relying on him, all it takes is faith.  Faith in who we cannot touch or see to take us to a place we cannot touch or see.  It seems foolish, really, until we are tired of wandering, tired of waking up in the wrong place.  Sometime, it seems foolish until we have exhausted all the other ways and out of desperation take that first hobble toward Christ.  “Oh God, if there is a God, I need you now.” 

When we do that, we draw on that tiny seed planted in our souls so long ago and out of our desperate cry comes a glimmer of hope, but hope all the same.  Our God loves you so much he will take that grain of hope and build on it so that as you travel that road with him, you may not know where you are going, but you do know you don’t want to go with anyone else. 

God gives to us a picture of where he is taking us.  It is more than a “just right” place.  It is a place designed by God where he will live with his beloved forever.  While we are here on earth, there really is no “just right” place to be, only a “just right” person to travel with.