Resurrection--already and not yet

        Hard to believe that Lent and Easter have come...and gone.  Lent seemed so long while we were in the middle of it, didn't it?  But then as Easter approached, whew, the weekend and the wonderful celebration on resurrection Sunday flew by in a nanosecond.  How I thank the Lord for this glorious, history and destiny altering event that we have the joy of remembering and celebrating year after year.  Jesus Christ the Lord is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Oh might we never, ever tire of rejoicing in this wondrous, astounding, gloriously Good News!
         And I also thank the Lord for the joy of having all our children home.  That truly is a tiny foretaste of heaven--to have your loved ones home.  Home together.
         If "home together" could be this happy and heart-filling and overflowing, can you even begin to imagine what our real heavenly home will be like?  No sorrow, no disappointment, no sin, no separation, no failure, no weakness, no disease, no despair.  And love, love, love unbounded and unfettered.  What a Hope we have ahead of us.     
         Yet right now, today, we're still in the midst of the muddy trenches of "real" life (though one day we will clearly see that this thing we call "real" life was actually just a pale, poor imitation, just a pitiful shadow of the truly real, perfect, and all-things-made-new heaven and earth).  And sometimes, oftentimes, this life can be challenging, confusing, and downright crushing.  We live in the "already and not yet"--already Christ has come, died for our sins, and risen from the dead.  Already He has given us abundant, eternal life now.  But not yet has this old earth been fully redeemed and restored.  Not yet are we fully sinless and perfected.  Not yet do we enjoy the infinite wonders, joys, and glories of our heavenly home.
          But because of Easter, because of the resurrection, we know--we know with absolute certainty--that one day we will.  We will live forever in the perfect, wondrous, endlessly joyful, completely satisfying, and completely loving heavenly home.
       Today may be hard...but the resurrection reminds us once again that the best--the infinitely best!--is yet to come.  As Tony Compolo preached many years ago, "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming."  It may feel like an endless, hard, perplexing "Good Friday" in your life...but Resurrection Sunday is coming.  Resurrection has come in Jesus...and it will come in your life as well.
         These words I just read from the Bluebookblog reflected this so beautifully:

"you let men ride over our heads;  we went through the fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance."  Psalm 66:12

sometimes

we can only see it

in hindsight

this place of abundance

to which we have 

been brought

we could never

have recognized it

while our heads

were being ridden over

or as we were

walking through

the fire and water

yet here we are

on the other side

of it all

in a spacious

and fruitful land

who could have imagined

that such a rugged road

would lead to

such a beautiful place

this too is resurrection 
           
        I don't know where you are right now in your story, but if it feels like you're slogging through the messy trenches of a never-ending, confusing Good Friday, take heart: Christ is risen from the dead.  And because He lives, you, too, will live.
        Resurrection has come...and is coming.  And one day you will look back, stunned, "that such a rugged road would lead to such a beautiful place."  I've seen it in my own life over and over again.  He truly does--and is--making all things new.  Even as you walk through the fire and water and toward that spacious and fruitful land.
        So trust Him as you walk and as you wait.  He's working...and Sunday's always coming.
        To God be the glory.