Our journey to the new heaven and the new earth, to living in the presence of God, is a journey into transformation and re-creation. It involves a daily dying to self – a taking up the cross – and is expressed in a life of service. Because this is the Christ-shaped love that is at the heart of who God is. The vision of the new heaven and the new earth, the longing to live in the presence of God, where “there will be no more death, and more mourning or sadness,†is not just a hope for the end of time, but a reality to be experienced here and now. It is by living as disciples of Jesus, through the love we have for one another, that we can see – with fresh eyes, as if for the first time – that God is with us, and that God even now walks in the cool of the day in the garden of our lives.