“Several summers ago I went hiking with some friends in the beautiful mountains of Glacier National Park in Montana…We came upon a long portion of the trail…that had been completely burned to the ground just a few summers before by a wildfire…We found it to be a very bleak landscape, except for the fact that the ground all around us on each side of the trail was amazingly lush and green and covered with bright pink flowers…We walked through this other-worldly valley…with a feeling that I can only describe as enchantment. Even though the fire had been destructive, new growth was springing to life very quickly. Call it the circle of life, call it nature’s way of garbage control. To three pastors on a hike it felt like it should be called ‘Resurrection Valley,'” begins Phillip Martin, pastor of Epiphany Lutheran Church in Richmond, Virginia. He continues, “John of Patmos, writing on his little island of exile at the end of the first century, gives us a glimpse of God’s final plan for creation and the ultimate fulfillment of his kingdom, and it sounds something like Resurrection Valley.” In Revelation 21:1-6, “we see a God who wants to make all things new. We see a God who doesn’t want to snatch his creatures away from a broken world, but one whose work is, at heart, renewing, refreshing, redemptive.”
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