Living In The Already, Waiting For The Not Yet...

 Morning sun peeps in through the curtains as eyes open, and I wake up to another day. It's been a week of struggle through pain, of simple obedience in the face of problems too big for one soul to handle. It's been about deciding to keep pushing towards healing, even when it hurts - to trust that the present tension will one day yield joy that was worth holding out for. 

I open the book I've been reading each morning and sight lands on the author unpacking that ageless truth that God works everything for the good of those who love Him.

He talks about how this is one of the most puzzling but profound verses in all of scripture because it assures us that even in the midst of great tragedy or pain, suffering is never wasted and all of the things that happen to us, happy or hard, can and will be used by God to make us more fit for Heaven. 

Some days, it's harder to believe that, isn't it? 

Just ask the author - he had to believe it as he looked on the dead body of his son who was struck by a vehicle in their own residential street. 

He goes on to add that such belief doesn't often come in the moment. As he buried his beloved six-year-old, the idea of God working it for good wasn't even a thought in his mind. It's only been in the decades since that he's understood. It's one of those things he's had to discover in time - to live his way into the answer. 

Suddenly, I'm rethinking everything as I realize how often we want to receive or give answers to the problems we face without realizing that some things just can't be grasped now. God doesn't tell us everything and sometimes, we need to be okay not knowing. And we need to let others be okay with not knowing also. 

It's not easy living in this space of already and not yet... of the point between promise and fulfillment... of question and answer. Faith is tested to the full measure when you are forced to sit with the truth that even this will made beautiful - ugly as it seems right now. 

It doesn't seem good. Feel good. Sound good. It is a bitter cup that, coming from the hand of any other but God, would be worth refusing. 

Somehow, in all this, goodness is laced throughout and one has to accept that it is present though hidden.

The fact that nothing is ever wasted in the Kingdom of God is one that often takes years to comprehend. It's easy to read Romans 8:28 and believe it when things are good but when things are tough, it's easier to conclude that the goodness ran out. That God left the premises and has given up on all He promised. Someone can quote you that truth but when you stare at the broken shards, doubt and fear and anger and sadness and all the other feelings is all you know. Only the act of living your way through the tension can bring you to a place where you truly, wholly believe it as fact. 

I find that often, God puts us in such a place to show us what He is capable of. To keep us in suspense so that we will come to know that we can trust Him with anything. As we sit with the present and can look back on what has been, it strengthens our hope and our faith for what is yet to be revealed. We are comforted in the tension of the not yet by the record of the already. But we are slow learners and sometimes, it may take us awhile to reach that place where we are okay with no answer and are content to simply have Him as the answer. To have His presence over resolution. To realize that, in some cases, the gift of His love and Himself is the resolution. 

Moments of hard can often give me reason to forget all I've seen and to falsely throw God's promises back at Him in frustration, wondering if all this broken will be actually used for the good He has said it would. Any reasonable person would think that, after years of walking with God, seeing the hope would be easy but I've found it's still really hard. And it's actually in the wrestling that it comes. It's in walking through the unseen and the unknown and the tension of all things strained that I discover Him bringing the truth back to me over and over and over. Reminding me that He can be trusted. Always. Forever.

Maybe I need to give myself more grace and be patient with what I don't yet see. 

Maybe in longing for the end of the story, I'm missing some hidden truth in between and maybe it's exactly that - the in between - that I am sanctified, perfected, transformed. 

Maybe in order to know hope deep in my bones I need to struggle with my own fears and doubts along the way. Like Jacob, it's in my fighting that I discover the face of God. That I find my surrender. 

Maybe, when it all comes down to it, I need to sit with my questions longer. Linger in the dislocation of the present in order to live my way into the faith He desires to grow in me. 

Maybe I can't fully know Him or know His Word to be true unless I allow myself to be human. 

And perhaps that's actually it: expecting myself to think divinely with a fallible mind - to understand what only God can in a moment...to see what only God can at the time - is to forget my own humanity. That I am still a work in progress, holding out for what I don't yet know while attempting to believe based on what I do know. And even what I think I know can still let me down. It's like trying to read a map with no guidance. 

I am not God, and I never will be. I cannot look at all of life with the perspective He does... else faith would not be necessary. I have no way of perceiving the redemptive in the face of so much sad, and it will only be the passing of years that shows me how God was thinking or what He was seeing at the time. I only know it part and in reverse. 

I only know now... but someday, I will know. 

Someday, I'll grasp it all and see the story in its entirety.

 I'll know that what He did was good all the way through. 

I'll fall down at His throne and cry glory and rest in the perfection of every detail and every hardship because of where it all ended up. 

But I am not there yet. 

I only have today. 

Beautiful morning with squirrel-song outside. Birds sounding the coming of Spring. Announcement of the greatest joy. 

Today, I will raise curtains to let the light in because the Light is always finding its way into me. 

If I keep on reading the story - living the journey - I will move eventually into what is shrouded at present. And until then, I will be okay waiting. Okay not knowing. I will dare to believe that a God bigger than my current doubts will someday prove them all wrong. 

"And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose..." 

Goodness is still here because God is here. And that is all I need.