Saturday, December 2

Now and Not Yet

God continues to make and reestablish covenants with people, and people continue to break them. But God is persistent and patient. There will be no end to God's pursuit of us.

God first made a covenant with Noah, then with Abraham, renewed with Isaac, Jacob, King David, Solomon. Now the people have strayed so far, they have been exiled from their homes and their land. They have forgotten the covenant God made with them. They have forgotten God.

But God has not forgotten them. This time, God will write the covenant, not on stone tablets, but on people's hearts. They will not have to remind each other to learn about God -- they will know God in the core of their being.

This is an interesting idea -- one that has been promised and offered, yet has still not come fully to fruition. On any given day I know God in the core of my being. I know God is with me, and God's presence is palpable. On other days, I feel quite empty. My search for God's presence becomes academic. And it needs to be. When I book-learn more about God, God then becomes more real once again. In a new way, but real just the same.

God's promise lives in the space we call, "now and not yet." The promise is now, but it is also not yet fully realized. We live in the tension between what God promises/what God desires for this world, and the world we actually live in. God is here, and yet not here. I know God, and yet I do not know God. Our world has God's fingerprints all over it, and yet it is damaged and depleted. 

Maybe it's ok to live in the now and not yet. Maybe both can live somewhat comfortably in the same space. Maybe I can revel in knowing God while I am still learning all I can about God. I can know God written on my heart, and still look forward to the day I know God face to face. 

Narrative Lectionary Daily Devotions written by Kace Leetch from Clergy Stuff.

Narrative Lectionary Text: Jeremiah 31:31-37

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name: If this fixed order were ever to cease from my presence, says the Lord, then also the offspring of Israel would cease to be a nation before me forever. Thus says the Lord: If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will reject all the offspring of Israel because of all they have done, says the Lord.