Love Story Week 16: When God sings for joy

He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.

- AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God

My friend Michael Boggs has a wonderful song out called "What Would Jesus Undo?"  People have been posting their answers to that question—beautiful answers:  injustice, poverty, fear, shame, loneliness, cancer, betrayal, prejudice, grief.

I was thinking of that song this week as I learned the story for Wednesday Bible study this week.  In this week's story, John gets to see that Jesus will indeed undo all of it, and more.

In my dream, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old one was gone forever!  

- Revelation 21:1

John hears a song being sung.  This is my favorite song in the Bible, because God is singing it! When God gets what he wants, what he set his heart on from before the creation of the world, this is what he hummed to himself as he brought light and oceans, mountains, giraffes, lilies, sparrows and stars into being.  This is what he sang as he worked the dust into a body and breathed his life into Adam.  Maybe he came humming it to himself as he walked in the garden in the cool of the evening.  Maybe he stopped humming and listened, because Adam & Eve were not waiting for him as usual.  They were hiding.  In the stillness, he could hear the heart-thumping sound of shame.  This God, the great Lover who pursued us, who kept closing the separation between us, was working all along through history for this moment: to restore it all.  To have us back.  And in John's dream, he heard God's heart swell and a soaring melody of pure joy erupt from the Throne of Heaven.  And this is the song God sings in John's dream:

Now I will be with my people!  I will live with them, 

and they will be with me, and I will be their God!

- Revelation 21:3

God will undo separation.  That is what he has done in Christ, and is doing through the church.  When God gets what he wants, he gets to be with us.  When he sings for joy, this is what he sings about.

I understand that.  Nothing makes me happier than knowing my kids are coming for dinner.  I sing while I chop and mix and bake.  Nothing is better than all of them together, laughing and enjoying each other.  As I write this, Matt is flying home from South Africa;  his girl is standing at the gate waiting for him.  My grandchildren are coming over to play this afternoon.  The best part of my day is when Dennis Worley is headed home.

We just want to be with the people we love.  And so does God.

That's why we tell these stories.  This is the assignment Jesus gave us:  Go tell everybody everywhere that God wants to be with them.  Close the gap.  Undo separation.

Everything we do is about getting everybody to that moment.  Because he is on his way.

I can't even imagine what it will be like when God starts singing for joy.

Click here to hear how the Love Story ends, when God gets what he wants

and download the homework.  

Who will you tell this story to this week?