A Beautiful Tension

One Sunday God gave me a thought, which I eagerly started prayer journaling in the moments before our church service began. But as the music started, I set down my prayer to participate, and as the message began, my mind was on its ending. On getting to go home, curl up in my chair, and resume my prayer, seeking God in the place He'd led me with such life.

But part way through the sermon, God convicted me of my wandering thoughts. My longing to meet Him intimately in my prayer was good but so was gathering with other believers in church, and I was trading the present goodness He had given me for the goodness I was anticipating.

I didn't stop anticipating, but as I re-centered my focus on the moment in which God had me, He spoke to my heart within it. He gave me beautiful revelations from the sermon that I would have missed by living with my eyes only towards the future. Revelations that actually increased the moment of prayer I was anticipating for after the service.

It struck me how much this dance defines our lives.

The tension between the present good and the good yet to come. 

It can be so easy to dismiss our longings for the future in light of the present moment, but it can be equally easy to disregard our present moment, believing the future one is where our desire will be fulfilled. 

The temptation is to treat the present moment as a way-station, getting us to the future we ache for, but God is working in what already is too. God gives us desires, vision, promises that He will play out, and He's moving just as bountifully in our present circumstances.

And that tension can be hard but it's beautiful. It's a reminder that nothing is wasted; God is moving in every moment past, present, and future.

This is the beautiful tension of the Christian walk. Redemption is finished, and yet its work is still playing out in the world. We live in eternity now and long for eternity to come. Wanting what God has for us in the future and living in what God has for us now. Living in the good to come and the good that already is, not discounting the one in favor of the other.

We serve a God who makes all seasons beautiful.