No longer will there be any curse!

(Maria Sandberg, "Glimpses of Heaven!" 1880)

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"No longer will there be any curse!" Revelation 22:3

Our beautiful world, filled with the wonderful works of God, bears evident traces that it is not what it was created at first. It bears everywhere, the marks of a great change—which change is accounted for in the Bible by the fall of Adam. God made everything very good—but man sinned, and the curse came upon himself and the whole creation! Though still beautiful, yet how much is its beauty marred and defaced! Now, thorns and thistles spring up, where once were only lovely flowers and sweet fruits. The wild beasts of the forest, though still beautiful in outward form—now possess violent and ferocious dispositions; and the beasts of burden groan under the tyranny of man. Man himself is subject to labor and toil, to sorrow and sickness and death. Even his most innocent enjoyments are marred by sin!

But thanks be to God, the promise of deliverance from the curse sounds in our ears in this blessed Scripture, "No longer will there be any curse!" Where then, is this land of blessing and perfection? It is that Paradise which Christ has gone to prepare for His people; that "Rest which remains for the people of God."

Here on earth, even our very blessings are mixed with signs of the curse.
But there shall be no more curse in our Heavenly home:
  no more toil and labor,
  no more weariness and faintness,
  no more hunger or thirst,
  no more bitter cold or burning heat,
  no more disappointment,
  no more sorrow,
  no more pain,
  no more sickness,
  no more death!

In Heaven there shall be no more curse, but all will be the perfection of bliss. Who can conceive the happiness of such a state? For this, the whole creation groans and travails in pain, eagerly waiting for its consummation.

Let us, then, who have such exceedingly great and precious promises, when sighing under the effects of the curse in any of its forms—gladly turn our thoughts to meditate on Heaven's glorious realities! And when admiring the beautiful works of God, which still exist to show us what they once were—let us also turn our thoughts to the greater beauty and glory of our Paradise above!