I like D.A. Carson’s comments on Revelation 7 in For the Love of God. He writes:

“There is not a whiff of racism here… in Revelation 5:9 (NIV), the elders sing a new song to the Lamb: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’ The ultimate community of God is transnational, transtribal, transracial, translinguistic. In that sense, Los Angeles is a better anticipation of heaven than Tulsa, Oklahoma. Let the church, strengthened by the grace of God, live out now, as largely as possible, what she will one day be.”

I love this vision of the church as it will be in heaven. And I love that here in the DC area, we have a pretty good picture of what heaven will be like as well. It never ceases to amaze me how the whole world is here: in one shopping center, you might find a Korean restaurant next to a Latino market. I’ve probably eaten at restaurants of a dozen different ethnicities in the last year. Several nations are represented on street.

And our church is growing in racial and ethnic diversity, especially with the start of ESL. In light of the comments above, we should thank God for the ethnic diversity of our area and our church, and pray that our church would continue to grow to be a church that is more and more of an “anticipation of heaven.”

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