The Holy Spirit as the Transfiguring Power of the Future

Every tear will be unshed

Pentecost

Oft uttered as the living accompany the dead to their place of rest, scripture’s final prophet promises with his penultimate vision that one day— on the last day— “God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

“Mourning and crying and pain,” John the Seer says, “they will be no more.”

But the dead do not cry.

And the saints sing the sanctus; they do not weep.

So whose eyes will the Lord turn from tears to joy?

Whose cries will the Lord transfigure into laughter?

Crucially—

This is not simply a promise of what God will work in the future.

This is a promise of what God will work from the future.