New Heavens and Earth Center Joyful, Nonviolent Life

No more shall there be an infant who lives but a few days

God is creating new heavens and a new earth. Former things shall not be remembered. Be glad forever in what I create, for I create Jerusalem as a joy and her people as a delight. No more shall the sound of weeping be heard. No more a child of days, or an old person who does not fill out a lifetime. They shall build houses and inhabit them; plant and eat. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity. Before they call, I will answer. Wolf and lamb feed together; the lion eats straw; dust is the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.

The vision is a world where grief, infant death, stolen housing, and predatory power are not the last word. It does not say present grief or disease or housing loss is caused by deficient faith. It does not flatten into a date chart, and it does not exhaust itself in one modern state. Jerusalem-as-joy is the center of a creation-wide peace, not a geopolitical exclusive.

Houses they actually inhabit is as theological as the wolf. A warranted life is to let this picture judge our settlements and our violence, to comfort mourners without blaming them, and to work toward non-hurt on the mountain without claiming we have already arrived.