Jesus comes as light into the deep darkness of the world, and he comes with the power of creation, of life, and with the presence of God. His arrival is an invitation for us to lay down the weapons of darkness that we use to protect ourselves and to trust him to be our rescuer.

The wonder of the Incarnation is that God came all the way down to dwell with us… we could not climb to heaven to see him, could not even enter the holy place, and so the holy one tore down the gates of the world and brought his holiness out into our wilderness. He descended and descended and descended until the word that was spoken became the Word in flesh one night in Judea.

Jesus came to show us the Father and to open blind eyes. Our call as his people is to look away from the distractions around us (both good and bad) and turn our opened eyes toward God.

“Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” In Jesus, we see God’s welcome and we are invited to repent of our ways and live like the good king who came to serve.

What the end of Revelation shows us—what the end of the whole cosmos shows us—is that everything in creation, from the beginning to the end, was designed by God to tell the story of Jesus Christ. Marriage and civilization, days and seasons—all of it has always been about Jesus.

Built upon the foundation of the Apostles, we enter the New Jerusalem through gates that remind us that, like the 12 tribes of Israel, we are all God's adopted children. These images have layers of meaning, as we, God's people, are the city of God; we are His Temple, as He makes us perfect for Himself.

God made us in all the complexity of our relationships to image him, to shine his glory as it reflects off of our God-shaped lives, and what is coming for us is better than even our best longings.

The wonders of our great inheritance in Jesus Christ are so majestic and incomprehensible that we need divine help to grasp them.

The vision of the 1000 year reign highlights God's ultimate and effortless defeat of the devil. The vision of the great white throne is the culmination of our personal relationship with God. It is each soul's face to face encournter with God, who has complete and pure knowledge about each of us and still loves us. This life is a training ground where we learn to recognize our sin and look to Him, so that we may find our names in the Book of Life.

This is the purpose of God: to cast down injustice and cruelty and put an end to them; and to prepare us a feast. He invites us as guests, he washes us, and he clothes us in costly garments of righteousness not our own to give us renewed identities as image-bearers.