A New City

In his book Cities of God Rodney Stark gives us a picture into the cities of the Apostle Paul's day. The picture is grim.  People die at such an alarming rate that new people from the countryside have to come into the city if cities are going to survive.  The cities are dirty places filled with disease and just a general nastiness.  Cities are unsafe. No one goes out at night without an armed guard.  People in the cities are so often maimed that you described people who had the same name by their deformities so you knew who you were talking about.

Given how horrific cities are (Think the movie Bladerunner) I would assume that like Bladerunner (I know, I'm talking about the "original" ending to the movie) that hope would come in escaping city and finding the pristine wonder of the country and nature.  However, the Bible goes in a very unexpected direction.  Instead of having people escape the city when the end of time comes, the Bible speaks of a new and renewed city.  A place where there are none of the horrors of the present city, but instead a place free from death or crying or mourning or pain.  

I can't help but wonder what people who lived in the horrors of the cities thought when those words of Revelation reached them.  

I also wonder why God chooses not to return us to the garden of eden (given the nastiness of cities, why not run back to nature as so many want to do in our day).  As the old song puts it, "we've got to get back to the garden."  Instead of a garden we get a city.  Could it be that God loves cities?  Could it be that God's word to us is if he can take a place as horrible and nasty as the cities of Paul's day and make them new, then he can do it with anything?  Even us.