The Last House on Greensburg Street

Margaret Owens spent forty-three years in the same clapboard house on Greensburg Street in New Orleans. She raised four children there, buried her husband from the front porch, and watched the neighborhood shift around her like sand. Then Katrina came. The water rose five feet in her living room. She lost the photo albums, the kitchen table her mother had given her, the pencil marks on the doorframe where she'd measured her children's growth. Everything that said, "You belonged here."

Three years later, Margaret moved into a newly built home six blocks east. Volunteers had framed it, roofed it, painted it pale yellow — her favorite color, though she'd never told anyone. On moving day, she stood in the empty kitchen and ran her hand along the countertop. No water stains. No mold behind the walls. She turned to her daughter and said, "It doesn't smell like the storm anymore."

That sentence holds the whole ache and hope of Revelation 21. John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and the sea — that ancient symbol of chaos and destruction — is gone. God Himself moves into the neighborhood. He takes up residence among His people, close enough to reach out and wipe the tears from their faces. No more death. No more grief. No more lingering smell of the storm.

The old order of things — every flood, every loss, every doorframe washed clean of your children's names — has passed away. Everything is being made new.