The promise of the future gets in the way of the reality of today.

 

This sounds a little heretical given the emphasis in Christian circles on the imminent return of our Lord but I think it is true. We see the future as something yet to come and therefore it can become a little like a credit card with an unknown limit in our hands. We charge our sanctification to the future and put off the change and transformation of the Spirit to another time – yet to come. We are banking on having time tomorrow to get to what we know we need to do today in terms of love and the spiritual life.

 

To be sure our future is hopeful but it is as Paul says "a certain hope". A certain hope sounds like an oxymoron because certainty is rooted in the past and present whereas hope is rooted in the future. So what does Paul mean by this except that the future is already here. The Kingdom to come has already come and stands amongst us. While we sit immobilized in place wailing for the return of our Lord like the disciples in the upper room the coming Christ has come and is already here dispensing His Spirit and is watching to see what we do with Him. Has He found us faithful? The coming judgement has already occured because God is not bound by time. The idea then of a certain hope comes directly from the nature of God. Only God can provide a certain hope. The idea of the future as something other than a motivator to immediate action is not from God.

 

So shouldn’t this provide us with motivation to put our faith into action now? You would think so but the lure of the future is very strong. We do not see the future for what it is – the right-hand side of today – we see it as something completely different from the now and so we treat it differently. The devil would have us believe that because Christ and judgement is coming we have time. Time to get around to the timeless. But when God speaks to us of the promise of the future it is to galvanize our faith into action NOW. When God spoke to Abraham about the future it was to move him into action immediately. When Christ spoke of His glorious return it was not to ensure the disciples sat around in a brilliant haze dreaming of what would come but to passionately move them into the world at that moment – to take what would be and recognize that because it was God speaking they needed to treat the future as what WAS right then at that moment.

 

The enemy has taken the rallying cry of God’s future and turned it into a sinister lullaby and sings us into a dark sleep with it.  

Do we desire to live in the bleakness of black unconsciousness dreaming about the future or awaken ourselves to the light of Christ that moves us to see the future now?

 

For fans of The Matrix the question is this – which pill will you take: the red pill or the blue pill? The choice makes all the difference in (and to) the world.