On a day like today, even the trees seem to be groaning, yearning, reaching, stretching for Heaven. It’s like they can’t get close enough to the beauty of what God has created.

I have been filled with a strange and strong longing this week. Yearning for something. The weather has been so gorgeous, and you would think this would produce the opposite effect. Yet this kind of jaw-dropping beauty stands in stark juxtaposition to the ugliness I am seeing on the news. It illuminates the difference between the Here and the What Will Be so clearly. I love being alive on days like this, love experiencing all the amazing blues, and greens, and bird songs. Yet I know that so much better is waiting in God’s Heaven, where there is no more pain, no more weeping, no more conflict. Thus, the groaning.

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” – Romans 8:22-24a

I am truly thankful that Jesus will make all things right and new when He returns. I am waiting eagerly. Love, Lisa