Revelation from a Fifth Floor Window
Stuck in the most dangerous city in South America dreaming about a Kingdom to Come
Things look about the same as home from my fifth-floor hotel window.
Although I’m in a foreign country that speaks a foreign language and transacts life with a foreign currency, the gap is paper-thin from here. Language doesn’t matter through a window. And we paid our bill at the front desk last night with our credit card, which knows no boundaries between pennies and centavos.
As I look out the window at 7:30 AM, the traffic is building, and people are scurrying to find a place to park. People are walking hurriedly down the sidewalk. Some are in suits and others in jeans. A horn here and a siren there. The guy at the parking garage just thumbs-upped a woman in a car as she slid her identification card through the slot.
And I’m sitting five floors up on a window ledge watching it all happen without the privilege of ears to hear their conversations. And if I hadn’t taken three flights to get here over the last two days, I wouldn’t be able to discern a single difference between them and me. Or their city and mine.
They say this is literally the most dangerous city in South America. That’s why I’m sitting on this window ledge, waiting on the commuter flight to my final destination. Otherwise, I’d be at the coffee shop and bakery a few doors down. But, I was told, not only by my friends, but also by my government, not to leave this hotel.
This is not how it is supposed to be!
It’s a strikingly beautiful hotel with a name on it I’d find in every city back home. It’s nicer than my average stay because safety was important since I have my entire family here. And between us and whatever lies on the other side is a fifth-floor window. I feel so safe. And yet I feel so present here as the streets produce this low rumble five floors down.
It’s funny how, sometimes, we distort both sides of reality. We keep our eyes focused on the extremes. And it’s not all bad. There is some measure of healthy survivalism in doing so. Our soul couldn’t handle the constant stress of how much danger we are really in when we drive 80 miles per hour down a stretch of interstate just a few feet from a 37-ton machine six times larger than us, trusting that he got a good night’s sleep last night. And it is good that my defensive awareness was sharpened as I walked through the airport in the most dangerous city on this continent. Those things either enable me to face danger or sensitize my survivalist instincts, helping me steward my family well.
But, this is not the Gospel!
No, they are not even shadows of the Gospel.
Those things are consequences. Ramifications of the brokenness of human imagers of God. One suggests that I am in control. That I am good enough to protect myself in the face of mortal danger. The other is an awareness that there are people around me who would harm me for their own gain. Both are equally dangerous and are rooted in a fractured world that operates from the pain of the first human’s failure to submit to their identity and to trust the Maker. And all of this led to the two behaviors and mindsets that have left me stuck in this room, sitting on this ledge, and looking out this fifth-floor window like a kid at the zoo, hoping to steal a peek at the elusive lion behind the glass.
And, this is not the end!
No, it’s not, friend. As I’m peering down at the chef adorned in her white digs, the homeless guy in his tattered walking shoes, and the businessman in his fancy suit, I know that whatever pain is hidden behind their eyes will someday soon be washed away by the redemption that comes with the restoration of the original plan fully envisioned by the One who spoke all this into motion. There is a day coming when we will dive headlong into the fullness of the vision the Creator has for a new city and a restored people in a place called New Jerusalem.
Paul gave us a foretaste of how the people might see one another.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Paul in Galatians 3:28
And God Himself, through the mouth of Isaiah the prophet, offers us a taste of how opposing forces who live in fear of one another will submit to the ways of the Maker.
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fattened steer will be together; And a little boy will lead them. - God in Isaiah 11:6
And John the Revelator, in his great vision of what is to come, pulls back the curtain on what it might look like.
I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. - The Apostle John in Revelation 21:2
I long deeply for that coming City!
That’s the Gospel. That all things are being made new again. That the original dream that was birthed in a beautiful garden will return from the ashes of what it has become in this broken city that I am overlooking from this room in the sky.
Oh friend, it is TRUE! The stories are true.
There will come a day when all will speak in one tongue. Where we will “come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Isaiah 55:1) because the currency of the entire world will be the love of God. Where we will sit with our former enemies, and war will be no more. Where every tear will be wiped away, and every fear washed clean because the heart of humanity will be made right.
As Sam Gangee says in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it will be a place
Where, “All Sad Things Will Become Untrue”
In that city that will appear in the sky and come to rest on this wartorn planet, I will not be sitting on this fifth-floor window ledge peering down into the streets, stuck inside to protect my children from dangerous people. You will not be toiling from dawn to dusk simply trying to pay the bills and stay afloat. We will not be visiting our friends and family in hospital rooms and hospice beds. No way, friend. All will be made right.
Wars will be silenced.
Violence will be no more.
The lamb will lie with the lion.
And I will be drinking coffee and eating pastries in that quaint little coffee shop just around the corner.
Man as I read this the window image on the fifth floor is a good one - it paints the gap so clearly. Safe up there, but also cut off. But one day nobody has to hide, calculate the risk, or watch the world from a safe distance. Praise Jesus!
I love the stunning contrast you draw between the most dangerous city in South America and the Holy City, our eternal residence one day.
In the trips that I have made to Latin America, I have often preached on this inspiring topic of how we will all be united in the New Jerusalem:
• Free from danger, sheltered in the arms of God,
• Free from strife, united by His love,
• Free from distinctions of race or gender - all one in Christ Jesus.
Thank you for this beautiful, encouraging contrast!