Week 52: Memory Verse

Revelation 21:4-5 is the Bible’s final answer to the problem of suffering. After thousands of years of narrative — exile, slavery, crucifixion, persecution — God himself speaks from the throne and declares the end of every form of pain. The list is comprehensive and deliberate: tears, death, mourning, crying, pain. Nothing is left out. And the reason is not that suffering was an illusion but that “the former things have passed away.” The old order, with its brokenness and decay, has been permanently replaced.

The phrase “Behold, I am making all things new” is the last great declaration from the throne in Scripture, and every word matters. God does not say “I am making all new things” but “all things new.” He does not discard creation and start over; he renews and redeems what already exists. This is the deepest hope of the Christian faith: not escape from the material world but its total transformation. The God who began the story in a garden ends it in a city — the new Jerusalem — where heaven and earth are finally, permanently, joyfully united. Every tear, every loss, every death along the way is not forgotten but redeemed.