‘To me this is like the days of Noah,
    when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
    never to rebuke you again.
10 Though the mountains be shaken
    and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
    nor my covenant of peace be removed,’
    says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

11 ‘Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
    I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise,
    your foundations with lapis lazuli.
12 I will make your battlements of rubies,
    your gates of sparkling jewels,
    and all your walls of precious stones.

Who gets to heaven without, at times, feeling battered?

‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,’  Acts 14:22.

But the other side of battering there can lie building (or ‘re-building’).

And not only building but building with beauty.

Truly, in God’s Kingdom, it is repeatedly those who have suffered the most who ‘sparkle’ the most.

This is God’s work. Note the repeated ”I will”.

If we shine as lights in the world – as we surely pray we will – it is His doing, and to Him be all the glory. Just as the moon cannot boast that its light is its own, neither can we.

It will be in the final and full expression of God’s Kingdom that we will be most lustrous. But even now, our radiance can increase in our on-going relationship with Jesus (see 2 Cor.3:18).