The Promise of a New Covenant

The Promise of a New Covenant
Hebrews 8.7-13

One of my favourite rivers is the Coquet, which rises in the heart of my native part of England, and runs down into the North Sea about fifty miles south of the border with Scotland. It isn’t a long river, even by national standards, let alone compared with the great rivers of Europe, still less the mighty Amazon or the Mississippi and Missouri. But at every point it has character and style. It begins as a bubbly mountain stream, collecting water from several sources high in the Pennines. It comes down into a winding valley, with pretty little villages and heather-covered hills. As it gets wider, so its valley gets deeper, passing an ancient monastery which is still used as a place of prayer and pilgrimage, and going down into gorges lined with leafy trees. As it reaches the sea, it comes under the shadow of an ancient castle, and, as though to celebrate its arrival at its destination, opposite its mouth is a small island which serves as a bird sanctuary. Many brooks and streams from several different hills contribute to it. Its character develops and changes as it goes to and fro. Many parts of it offer excellent fishing, and plenty of other wild creatures find homes nearby. It remains a single river, moving purposefully to its goal, even though you would hardly guess, from the tinkling stream, how deep a cutting it would eventually make, just as someone who only knew its final stretch, broadening to meet the incoming tide, would not easily imagine the steep rocks and hills where it all began...

Taken from Hebrews for Everyone – by Tom Wright