In my third year of campus ministry, I have countlessly felt the same way about most of my deeper friendships and relationships with others:
"Man, I feel like I just ruined that relationship. Actually, even worse, maybe that's just all I do? What have I offered others besides frustration and hurt?"
It's a lie I counter when my depression and mood swing down low, where I find myself isolated from others and left to my own psyche to speculate and overthink.
"Does this person even want to be my friend anymore? Why won't they text back? What have I done wrong? There's no way our friendship is recovering from this."
But this past week, there is a passage from Scripture that my mind has been fixating on. I can't get it out of my head. It's the last scene of the entire Biblical narrative: God has defeated the source of evil (the "satan"), and has unified Earth with the dimension of where He rules, Heaven. He brings His Presence and human's existence together in perfect, total unity, for the first time since the very beginning of the Bible, when God initially created humankind and sought to fully dwell with them.
In this triumphant image out of the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, there is a vision of what the author is describing: a huge city with a throne is descending to be among God's people on earth, "and [the author] hear[s] a loud voice from the throne saying...'Behold, I am making all things new...write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true'" (Revelation 21:5, ESV).
Again, this passage has been stuck in my mind all week. I am constantly being reminded of it, I see it everywhere I turn. Scripture always applies to our lives differently at different moments, but let me offer an interpretation of how God is speaking this Scripture to me right now:
This is the end of the Bible's storyline. This is the ending we truly put our faith in as Jesus followers: Jesus, our King who, "after He provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven" (Hebrews 1:3, NIV). We believe that Jesus has already been inaugurated King, that He is already, sitting on the throne.
It would logically follow, then, that He can and is already speaking those words that are "trustworthy and true." Jesus is currently making all things new, and asking us to observe (behold) it!
If the restoration of all things, if everything is made new and redeemed is the trajectory of Jesus being King, why don't we believe His words are true and trust Him in the area of our broken friendships and relationships? Why do we all of a sudden go " oh, well that friendship won't work out anymore. There's too much miscommunication, hurt, and confusion."
But what if today we made the choice that, against all odds, against the hurt and pain, that Jesus is making all things new? That he is providing the opportunities for forgiveness, for honest and open conversations, for His power to restore and make all things new to be present where we or others have failed?
I'll answer that question: if we believed that for at least a day, we would maybe put forth the effort we didn't know we had, to live out God's vision for our life in a way that we didn't know was possible, to see Jesus seated as King of our lives, the King that already has been raised up and seated on the throne.
This is the good news of the Gospel for us "friendship/relationship 'ruiners.'"
