A while back, I had to go to CVS to fill a prescription. As I waited, I noticed the layout of the store. Giant signs hung from the ceiling over each aisle, telling shoppers where to find the items they needed. I began to read the signs: antacids, hearing aids, crutches, vitamins, bandages, blood pressure medicine, and so on and so forth. Suddenly, I realized that drug stores proclaim some serious biblical truths, and quite loudly at that, because stores like CVS wouldn’t exist apart from the Fall. Essentially, CVS is one big “reverse the curse” operation where we can find a bit of relief from the effects of the brokenness of sin and suffering around us and inside us. God created a world where we didn’t need CVS, and we turned it into one where we do. But changes are coming. Jesus is coming. And He’s going to “shake not only the earth but also the heavens…in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:26-27). Sin will be shaken out, righteousness will remain. Rejecters of God will be shaken out, believers in Jesus Christ will remain. King Jesus will reign and we will have glorified bodies on a new earth where you won’t be able to find a CVS anywhere, because gloriously, we won’t need one anymore.
Carried Along 
And, I say, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus”…A friend and I were talking at church last Sunday about His return…we wondered…do we look for His return and our escape (so to speak) more for our getting out of situations or just to be with Him and glory in His presence face to face?? Does it matter?? I want to know Him more deeply. Thanks for the call to remember what’s ahead.
I often wonder about that too, Gayle! I heard a thought-provoking sermon a few years ago that mentioned 1 John 3:3 and made the point that someone who is rightly hoping in the return of Christ will be most clearly
characterized by a pursuit of holiness. I had never made that connection before!