Isaiah 11:6–7: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, / The leopard shall lie down with the young goat, / The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; / And a little child shall lead them. / The cow and the bear shall graze; / Their young ones shall lie down together; / And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

August 5th, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

This is a glimpse into what Jesus Christ’s millennial kingdom reign on earth will be like. In these verses each animal is placed alongside its natural prey so the reader will understand what will become natural under the “Prince of Peace.” No longer will carnivorous animals eat meat, but instead they will become herbivores, or vegetarians, as we see here with the bear and lion eating grass. What strikes us about this is how closely it parallels what the Garden of Eden must have been like. It seems that the millennial kingdom will be like it was in Eden, before sin entered the picture. This is a description of life on earth after the removal of the curse. It will be a world of harmony between God, humanity, and nature.

We all sense that we are longing for, waiting for, something else, because God hardwired every person with that awareness. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has put eternity into man’s heart.” Every person who has ever lived instinctively longs for their eternal home, to be fully restored with God, and to be home with Him. Jesus Christ is our way home. C. S. Lewis wrote of it this way:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only . . . to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.

We are just strangers, pilgrims here, but we are heading for our true home, back to Eden.

“LORD, help us to keep our eyes on You and eternity this day.”