When Goodness Comes Home

“We are looking forward to God’s promise of new heavens and a new earth afterwards, where there will be only goodness.”

2 Peter 3:13 (LB)

O dear God, “Where there will be only goodness.”

After centuries of war, greed, and lust.

After indulgences shamelessly practiced

After hatred, hostility, jealousy and abuse.

Murder and martyrdom, crime and cruelty, curses and rebellion.

After whimpering cries from starving children

After tragedy and catastrophe

Loneliness and despair

At last…at long last

“There will be only goodness.”

O dear Lord

Your promise is Your guarantee

But please hurry a little!

Ruth Harms Calkin

I love today’s verse. In the NIV it says, “we are looking forward to…the home of righteousness.” Think of all that home, in its best sense, means: warmth and acceptance, a place of love and welcome. Home, in the truest sense, should mean a place where we fit like nowhere else. Right now, our souls have no real home on earth. There’s so much loneliness and despair, hate and violence. True, every once in a while, such as in our own homes with our own families, we are refreshed by long moments of tranquility, when everyone and everything around us is peaceful—wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were always that way? In our own homes and beyond? In our communities and around the world? One day it will be so. Goodness will have come home to stay.

What can you do to make your surroundings more like “home”? Hurry God’s promise a little by spreading his righteousness today.

I am so thankful, Lord, that I have a home of goodness to look forward to. May I feel at home in your righteousness today, sharing you with others.