The City To Come - Hebrews 13:14

  For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. - Hebrews 13:14

    Watching the news these days is a form of terrorism all its own. How can a Christian not be intimidated by the various stories that permeate the media. From the lawlessness and riots in our own cities to the current push by government agencies, the schools and the media to endorse and support the homosexual agenda to the mass murder of innocent lives in the abortion clinics of hometown America to the ISIS-controlled towns and villages in the Middle East we see nothing that encourages us. Nothing gives us hope. It would seem that all is lost. Fatalism infects the singular heart as it does the entire world!
    This may be true for many people but we Christians do have hope. A hope that is guaranteed to us by the words of Holy Scripture. - “But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” - Hebrews 11:16.
    True to His word, God has prepared a place for us. We know this because He has told us as much. Jesus revealed His plan to his disciples - “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” - John 14:2.
    It is true: we have no continuing city here. All of life in the world is straw . . . stubble that will be burned away in the end. Nothing here will last. Neither the good here nor the bad. So why do we fret and worry over things we know will come to an end?
    Sin has always ruled this fallen world. As long as we live here we are forced to accept the tolerable and the intolerable. We have no choice. It is, as they say, “the way of the world.” The way of the world has made all of us merely “wanderers.” Like the Israelites who wandered the desert for forty years we too wander our own desert called “the world.” It is no true home to us; it is no true sanctuary for us. Our home, our sanctuary awaits us as promised us just as surely as the land of Canaan awaited the twelve tribes of Israel.
    We can look past the desert where we wander. We can look past the miseries that engulf us. We can look past the death and the terrible machinations of men to a better place; to a Godly place where such things will never occur. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect,” - Hebrews 12:22-23. And we will find ourselves in a place where “ . . .God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” - Revelation 21:4.
    May we all persevere by faith and by faith continue to rest in our hope for the city to come.