Good morning. Today is Monday, August 3rd!

🥳 Congratulations on starting today with God, and thank you for letting us be a part of it.

📖 Verse Of The Day

— Revelation 22:3

🧠 Devotional

When people picture heaven, they usually think about what will be there. Streets of gold. Gates of pearl. Angels. Maybe seeing loved ones again.

But one of the most interesting things about the Bible’s description of heaven is how much time it spends talking about what won’t be there.

Near the very end of the Bible, John writes:

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, NIV)

Then just a few verses later comes a line that’s easy to read right past:

“No longer will there be any curse.” (Revelation 22:3, NIV)

That one sentence reaches all the way back to Genesis.

When Adam and Eve sinned, sin didn’t just affect them. It brought a curse upon creation. From that point on, the world was no longer as God had made it. Death entered the picture. Pain became part of life. The ground was cursed. Relationships were broken. Every generation since has lived in a world marked by the effects of sin.

That’s the only world we’ve ever known.

We’ve never experienced a day without death. We’ve never known a world without sickness, grief, temptation, or the consequences of sin. To us, those things feel normal because they’ve always been here.

But they won’t always be.

The Bible says a day is coming when the curse will be gone. There will be no more death. No more mourning. No more crying. No more pain. Sin will no longer have any place among God’s people, and nothing will ever separate them from Him again.

It’s easy to get excited about the beauty of heaven, and the Bible certainly gives us beautiful pictures. But the greatest promise isn’t found in streets of gold or gates of pearl. It’s found in what God removes forever.

The Bible begins with a curse entering the world because of sin. It ends with that curse being gone.

From Genesis to Revelation, that’s the story God has been telling all along.

Maybe that’s why Revelation spends so much time telling us what won’t be in heaven. Until we’ve lived in a world without the curse, we’ll never fully understand how wonderful these words really are:

“No longer will there be any curse.” (Revelation 22:3, NIV)