Unruined Fountains

I love Fountains Abbey. Its ruins are iconic and its surrounding landscape superb. As I look over my photographs taken last summer in the almost 30-degree-heat, the place looks even more attractive from the vantage of this freezing January evening.

Although ruins may be deemed romantic, they must, by definition, be inferior to that which is whole and entire. Fountains before the arrival of Henry Tudor’s commissioners must surely have been more magnificent than the damaged walls and roofless halls of the dissolution's aftermath.

Our world, though fallen and ruined by the Fall, remains wonderfully beautiful. Our bodies are still fantastically designed and the mountains, lakes and forests still evoke our lost Eden’s original perfection. So if the corrupted world of which are are now part still amazes us with its wonders, how much would it have done so before it was cursed? And how much more shall it do so again when the Great God re-makes it?

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.

Revelation 21:4-6, New King James Version