The now and not yet

Life in the now-and-not-yet-kingdom can be an emotional teeter-totter between the “now” and the “not yet.”

When I review world history from the past 2,000 years, there’s little evidence for a triumphalist view of the Kingdom’s spread throughout the earth. Cycles of violence and oppression continue without abatement from the days of Noah to the hour of Ukraine’s invasion. The United State’s self-image of type of Promised Land is unmistakably stained with the blood of Native Americans and Africans alike. Precious justice achieved through the Civil Rights Movement, though woefully incomplete, seems to hang by a thread. Forever the LORD shall keep a remnant as in the days of Elijah, but a majority seems beyond hope.

There exists spacetime beyond history where all that crushes our spirits and breaks our bones shall relent. We shall have life, true and unending life, precious and complete life, just and good life! The bloodstained age of perpetual war shall be a distant memory in the ages of peace. The victory shall be not only achieved, but realized in the heavens and the earth.

But we wait in trust. We wait for our promised inheritance yet realize only a field for our tomb. We perish in exile yet prepare for homecoming. We weep over the destruction of our people yet encourage the remnant that their children’s children shall have peace. Our heel bleeds from the serpent’s bite and our disjointed hip aches from fighting with God, yet we claim to be evil’s bane and children of the Most High.