DAILY BYTESo what do we do now, in the in-between-times, as we wait for God’s reign of peace? Like Isaiah, as Christians we have, perhaps foolishly, accepted the charge to speak about God’s peace during a time of war. Isaiah never saw God’s peaceable kingdom on earth, and though we proclaim that Christ already reigns, we may never see the culmination of that reign during our lifetime.
Sometimes speaking and living God’s good news will be easy, and sometimes we will minister in what seems to be hell on earth. But Christ has called us to not believe what our eyes have seen or our ears heard. The moment we put our faith in Christ our lives were transformed. Reality has been turned upside down. Everything is backwards. The entire paradigm has shifted; the rules of the game have changed. God is with us! When we witness and experience desperate pain and suffering we don’t just have to cope. We have the far more arduous task of believing that pain will eventually be transformed, that bodies and minds broken by addiction and disease will be healed, even if, like Isaiah, we won’t see it in our lifetimes. It is the belief that death was truly defeated that allows us to work for affordable housing and good preschools, even when we don’t see the results. We don’t know when and we don’t know how and we don’t know why change takes so long. Perhaps the hardest thing we will ever have to do is to watch a lion devour a lamb and to keep the hope alive that God is still with us, that God’s heart is breaking, that what God desires is different, and that peace will come.
In the aftermath of WWII, a scrap of paper was found in the Warsaw Ghetto with these words written on it by an unknown Jew, “I believe I believe I believe with a perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; in the coming of the Messiah I believe. And even though he tarry, I nevertheless believe. Even though he tarry, Yet, I believe in him, I believe I believe I believe.”
We who believe hope for things yet unseen. We believe that the Messiah has come and we long for his return. We might be hoping and waiting for a long time. We come together as the body of Christ and remember that this mess isn’t the whole story. Addiction and disease and death have not won. The righteous King has come, and He will return.
So let’s renew our minds and our imaginations. Let’s remember that there was a birth that changed everything. The birth that signals that God’s kingdom has come, that death no longer reigns. The birth that is our reality. This is a time of hope! God is with us.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, open our eyes to your kingdom on earth. Fill us with peace and hope and thanksgiving for your Son Jesus Christ’s birth, life, and death.
SCRIPTURE
Isaiah 11. 9-10
They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
