Revelation 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
As I watched a clip of Joni Mitchell singing her iconic folk song, “Both Sides Now,” at the recent Grammy awards, I got a little teary-eyed. Nostalgia transported me back to the 60’s when life looked a lot different than it does today. Like Mitchell’s song, life moved from the illusion of ice cream castles in the air to reality for so many in during that time. More than a few were left blowin’ in the wind.
The words of one of my students describes the two sides well, “when the rains of adulthood wash away the chalk-covered sidewalks we drew as children.”
Whenever idealism doesn’t work, chaos ensues. And idealism filled many in the 60s. After the promises of a better world filled with love and peace never materialized, a deep uncertainty settled on an unsuspecting generation. An uncertainty that has metastasized into instability, hopelessness and an endless search for satisfaction.
If we view only two sides of life—that of a starry-eyed romantic or disappointed skeptic—we’re likely to end up at the same place.
Thank God there’s a third side. A side that stretches beyond life’s ups and downs. It’s a side that propels us beyond our fickle feelings and lands us in the middle of unchanging truth. Truth that declares although everything we experience in this life passes away; something better lies beyond the bend.
The Apostle John pointed to the third side. He saw a new heaven and new earth. A place with no more death or sadness or tears. A place where every heartbreak, every failure, every disappointment, crystallizes through the pure lens of eternity. This third side infuses the other sides with the meaning we long for. And until we get that, we will never get love or life, as Joni Mitchell laments.
I’m still a romantic (with a dose of realism). I’m not immune to disappointments and insecurity. But Jesus rescued me from holding on too tightly to either the highs or the lows. And he led me to something infinitely higher.
Friend, I hope you’re living in the beauty of the third side now.