For the Christian the present is the loneliest and most difficult moment to understand. In the past we look upon the great acts of God, and we catch the glimpses of a sovereign plan played out on the passing of history. We look back and we see waters parting, angels speaking and swords flashing; all the drama and power that would be expected of a world in which the eternal Deity acts.
Look towards the future and we find the end of the story. There up ahead lays the satisfaction of all our dreams and the wiping of every tear. Around the bend we catch the echoes of trumpets, the homecoming of all the saints, and the faces of all those whom we have ever loved. One day, all the incoherence of life will be threaded back into the tapestry as one delightful surprise as we see Him with our own eyes.
But the now, the here and now, is quiet and seemingly void of Him who seems so clear in the then and in the later. The monotony of every day carries on and death silently grinds at all our bones. There are no voices from heaven, no battle fields on which the swords of angels cut through wicked men. In the now we as Christians drink in the incoherence of death as those in whom eternal life dwells. In the now, there are no trumpets on heavenly lips to be heard announcing the reign of our King. We live on the silent planet where every man fancies himself a ruler. So how do we as Christians live in the now, what is the answer to this aching question. I don’t know…but I wish I did. The only answer I dare to strain at is not a nice one, but perhaps it is the one I need to hear.
The past and the future require nothing of us. What was…was, and in spite of all our planning, what will be, will in the end… be. But the now requires of us obedience. In the now the Christian finds himself longing for the story that is so clearly seen in the past and in the future, while forgetting all along that the story is unfolding moment by moment. We long to see God as those did then and those who will later. But I think we forget that we are not mere spectators. Why does God seem so quiet now, so far off and unwilling to act? I don’t quite know and it makes me angry that I don’t know.
But I think that somewhere inside me there is this whisper that convicts me of some kind of an answer. For the Christian to know God in the now, it means obedience. Unlike the past and the future I cannot know God in the now as a spectator, but as a slave who would be called a son. Perhaps the Christian is to know God in the now by the dying of self in the every day. How exactly? My mother’s words come to mind. Trust and obey. This is to me an entirely unsatisfactory answer and does not seem to soothe the aching of my soul. But what does it matter, if it is the truth. That being the case, I suppose I will leave the soothing of my heart to Him, and find solace in the fact that the truth that I am to bow to, is also the person that I long to know…here in the now.
For me to live is Christ, to die is gain….
