It’s real

Dear God, this is Kelley.

You’ve been telling me this for years — I’ve won. We’ve won. That winning is in process, but it is also HERE. We get to experience both, both the “here” and the “coming.” And what is more, we get to participate in it. In fact, if we choose not to, we won’t see it. We won’t experience it.

N. T. Wright writes of Abraham, the first human who, in N. T.’s thinking, exemplified this awareness: “Abraham is …the one who … allows his thinking and believing to be determined, not by the way the world is, and not by the way his own body is, but by the promises and actions of God.”*

I see, God, but I forget! I let the world (my own baggage and the baggage of others) pull me down. I forget that seeing is an active pursuit! Your Kingdom is HERE. You are HERE. Our overcoming is HERE. AND we get to act, to participate in its flow. We get to usher it into its reality. But what motivation, when we know we win!

When I “get” this, God, I not only rise above my hardships, I am above my hardships. We all are.

Reflection

In what ways do you experience this promise of God in the here and now? Do you practice grasping it?

Prayer

Dear God, You are hard work! We have let ourselves get so lazy, so far away, so self-righteous, so “let’s get real,” that we have forgotten Who it is we stand before. You spoke, and things came to be! You are the creator of the bird, the tree, the quark, the child. You set all things into motion. We dare to think You will be overcome by problems of our manufacture? Forgive me, Lord, my blindness. May I work to see as Abraham did! Amen.