Every Little Thing's Gonna Be All Right
The gospel's most personal promise.
In Bob Marley’s song “Three Little Birds,” he sings, “Don’t worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right.” No matter what’s going on in our lives, we deeply want to believe that, don’t we?
The Bible tells us that it isn’t just wishful thinking. The Bible tells us that, in Jesus, that will actually happen. He’s a complete Savior who will make everything all right.
The end of this world for the believer is not destruction of this world but a re-creation of it—a restoration of all things (Acts 3:21) by the redemptive power of Christ.
In Revelation 21:1, John says he saw that the first heaven and earth “passed away,” which might sound like total destruction, but the same word is used of our own death before resurrection. We don’t say a person is destroyed when they die and are raised; we say they are transformed. The new creation is to the old what our resurrection body is to this one: the same, but glorified.
Now, I don’t fully know what that means, but for starters, it means this world will get its life back. In Romans 8:20-23, Paul writes, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God…And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
The entire creation is groaning. But when Christ returns, and we are raised, he will heal the world. Scripture gives us a glimpse of the joy: Psalm 96:11-12 says, “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy.” Isaiah 55:12 says, “The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” We haven’t yet seen what the animals and trees and mountains and hills really are. But we will. They won’t be torn apart, strip-mined, or filled with kitschyness like Gatlinburg.
Creation stands with us, groaning for the redemption of our bodies, our resurrection. When we are healed, creation is healed. And that won’t just be any old good day; it will be a wedding day. Revelation 21:2 describes heaven as prepared like a bride on her wedding day, adorned for her husband. We will be presented faultless before God, all sin purged, everything praising God and happy in him forever.
Jonathan Edwards called heaven a world of love. That’s what it’ll be. Heaven is the love every human heart wants.
Here’s why I say that. Think of your life right now. There is a lot of good, isn’t there? But there are some things—things you don’t even want to think about—that have scarred you. Maybe it was something you did. Maybe it was something done to you. Whatever it is—and we all have more than one—Jesus is going to heal that wound. That bad past won’t harm you anymore. It won’t embarrass you anymore. It will be restored and redeemed in a way that brings glory to Jesus and the deepest possible joy to you. Jesus will restore your broken heart. He’s going to reach down into those tender spots, and he’s going to do what only he can do there. You will not be disappointed.
And more than that, he’s going to give us a new world in which that awful thing can never happen again. Your deepest wounds that haunt you even now will become, in his restorative hands, untrue.
You don’t have to deserve that new life. Jesus earned it for you by his life and death. It’s his gift of grace. It will be like a wedding day that never ends: love, laughter, and celebration. No shame. Only joy. Your future in Christ is brighter than you can see right now.
And that helps us live today. That’s why the Bible tells even those mourning a loved one that if they are in Christ, they need not grieve without hope—because Jesus defeated death, and death for those in Christ is just an entrance into the place he has prepared.
We will still groan in this life, still have hard and sinful and despairing days. But that groaning will be answered in the best possible way. The restoration of all things isn’t just an answer to our longings; it is the best possible answer to them. It will not only be that the bad things we currently experience cease to be, but that—somehow in a way we can’t fully understand—all the bad things will, as J.R.R. Tolkien said, come untrue. Romans 8:28 says God “works all things together for good,” not merely compensating for evil but weaving it into something that glorifies him. Joseph saw it when he told his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). What was true for Joseph will be true for everything, for everyone, in Christ.
Isaiah 35:10 says, “And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” We will obtain gladness. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
The joy we want is always a little out of reach, and the joy we have is too often only momentary. But in heaven joy will be ours—not a loan, not fading, but an eternal gift of grace from the crucified hands of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us so that our future would be as good and glorious and happy and joyous as God himself can provide. And if it’s God providing it—the God who made sunsets and friendships and laughter and music and all the good things we enjoy—then imagine what heaven must be like without anything broken mixed in? Nothing will be better. Nothing could be.
This is the future the Bible promises. So, in a way, Bob Marley was spot on. Because of Jesus, we can say don’t worry about a thing, ‘cause every little thing—and every big thing—gonna be all right. Not because “things just work out” but because Jesus in his glory will set all things right. And it will be perfect. It will be the resolution to this world’s problems, longings, needs, and desires. The end of the story will be a great one because of the Great One who will bring it to pass.