I

took some friends on an old taxi driver’s tour of New York City. We

enjoyed breakfast at my favorite “greasy spoon,” plunged into the

subway, ferried to the Statue of Liberty, walked Wall Street and

Times Square, strolled Broadway and the theater district, sat quietly

in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and stood in awe on the 100th-floor

balcony of a skyscraper, taking in a panoramic view of the city. They

pronounced it “an exciting place to live.”

But

I didn’t show them the ­places where I’d been mugged, the

kinds of places that the singer Michael Card calls “doorways

darkened by despair.”

The

picture Revelation draws of the New Jerusalem is beautiful, exciting,

and full of diversity. The nations stream into it from across the

earth. And the Holy City has no dark side. It has no intractable

injustice, simmering racial hatred, porn shops, unemployment lines,

broken family relationships, potholes, or trash. Because God is

there, the city is full of goodness and light; evil has no place to

hide.

This

vision offers an invitation and a warning. In the Holy City, God will

be with us, and all nations will be brought to Christ in harmony. Yet

“nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what

is shameful or deceitful.”

Are

you looking forward to the day when we can live there in peace and

harmony with God?