the other day in the car on the way to the the thai restaurant, our pilgrim friend holly from traverse city read aloud from isaiah 54:10 about God's promise that His love is less shakeable than mountains and his covenant of peace is no sooner removed than the largest hills. and then i thought about what that means. to me it means that when it comes to us and God, we are two nations who will not [ever] go to war. you can bank on it.then at toast the other night i had 1 john 3:2 on my mind:
(1) we are children of God
(2) what we will be has not yet been made known
i love God for being a God who holds the tension of both of these things being true at once: the surety of what already is (beloved children in a covenant of peace) and what has yet to be revealed (what'll we look like once all this grime has been sloughed off?). i love him for this paradox.
and i want to live out of that position of security and hope.
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This reminds me of another quais-paradoxical piece of scripture, one that, atleast for me, gives me great confidence whenever there's the "walking throw the valley of the shadow of death," or when things get downright crappy when the gates of hell don't seem that easy to prevail, in Ephesians, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heaveny realms." This is in the present tense--I'm sitting here in my chair, but I'm also seated with Jesus in Heaven. I'm here, "inside," almost as if I'm in a TV show or something, but also "outside" where Jesus is watching it all. That seems so contradictory at times, that as crappy as things may get--whether sin or failing or pain or whatever--we're still seated with Christ. When Peter says "make your calling and election sure," it seems more or less a matter of perspective, especially since Paul is big on "set your hearts on things above," which jives nicely with, "where your heart is, so is your treasure." Another way, I guess is, make sure you have your ticket ... a movie ticket. So, though we're slugging it out here amidst the mud and mire of a broken, jankey Creation, we're already seated in the thrones perhaps mentioned at the end of Revelation. It is called The Greatest Story Ever Told, and God is the Audience of One, but how cool it is that as it says he "revealed the mysteries of his will," and it's more like God is telling us, "Come sit here with me, and I'll show you the big picture." And we're in it.
By the way, the word verification thing to post a comment is "prayi." I find that downright interesting because I just bought an iTouch for my sister today for Christmas, and am playing with it right now. What a nifty little coincedence, amidst all the iPods, iPhones, and now an iTouch, when the coolest of all is the absolutely free and much cooler iPray. Cool.
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