Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our Reading titled Really Alive was written by

Wyn Collier. Since it was the week after Easter, our five-year-old son, Wyatt, had heard

plenty of resurrection talk. He always had questions,

usually real stumpers. I was driving, and he was buckled into the seat behind me. Wyatt peered out

the window, deep in thought. Daddy, he said, pausing and preparing to ask me a tough one,

when Jesus brings us back to life, are we going to be really alive or just alive in our heads?

This is the question so many of us carry, whether or not we have the courage to speak it aloud.

Is God really going to heal us? Is he really going to raise us from the dead? Is he really going

to keep all his promises? In Revelation

chapter 21, the Apostle John describes our certain future as a new heaven and a new earth.

In that holy city, God himself will be with us and be our God. Because of Christ's victory,

we're promised a future where there's no more tears,

no evil arrayed against God and his people. In this good future, there will be no more death,

or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. In other words, in the future God promises, we'll be really alive.

We'll be so alive that our life now will seem a mere shadow.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 7.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,

prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne

saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their god he

will wipe every tear from their eyes there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain

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