The Fire That Makes All Things New

In the longleaf pine forests of the American Southeast, fire is not the enemy — it is the agent of renewal. The U.S. Forest Service regularly sets prescribed burns across places like the Apalachicola National Forest in northern Florida. The flames consume the choking undergrowth, the dead needles, the tangled vines that have slowly strangled the forest floor. For a day or two afterward, the landscape looks like devastation — black earth, smoking stumps, ash drifting like gray snow.

But within weeks, something astonishing happens. Wiregrass pushes through the charred soil. Wildflowers — pitcher plants, orchids, sundews — bloom in a riot of diversity that hadn't been seen in years. The longleaf pines themselves, engineered by their Creator with thick bark and fire-resistant needles, stand taller and healthier than before. The old, suffocating tangle is gone. What emerges is not a repaired version of what was. It is something entirely new.

This is the promise of Revelation 21. God does not pledge to patch up the old creation, to renovate a crumbling house one more time. He promises to make all things new. The former things — death, mourning, crying, pain — will pass away like undergrowth consumed in holy fire. And from that clearing, the New Jerusalem descends, radiant as a bride, into a world where the Almighty dwells with His people face to face, and every last tear is wiped away forever.