Surrendering to the Now…Expectant for the Not Yet
As our culture grows more and more polarized and brokenness seemingly ever-present, I find myself aching for a world without pain, sorrow, and death. Aching for a world in which truth, beauty, and goodness flow like a river throughout all relationships and creation. Each morning as I begin pushing the pedals of the running machine, I am aware of my hunger to escape the discomforts of the Now with a “fix” of the transcendent. Even creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now awaiting its restoration (Romans 8).
Just as hunger points to the reality that we were made to eat, our craving for a better world suggests that either one existed in the past or will in the future. According to the Christian worldview, a better world did exist, and a better world is yet to come. Travel back with me to the beginning of time to peer into a world in which everything flourished according to the Creator’s good design.
In the biblical story, God created us and this world out of love. The Master Artist designed us to seek Him to meet our needs and to reflect His overflowing goodness back to Him and into the world. We rested in the care of our Creator. We lived out His directive to take care of the world. We lived out His design to love each other for the other’s good. Heaven and earth kissed as God’s truth, beauty and goodness infused every part of creation, and peace flowed like a river between God, humanity, and the world.
In time, tragedy struck. We turned our backs on God—we turned our backs on love—and sought to meet our deepest needs through created things rather than through the Creator. Our receptive posture grew desperate—grasping for security, acceptance, and control. When we stopped resting in the care of our Creator, we damaged our relationship with God. When meeting our own needs became of greatest importance to us, we damaged our relationship with each other and with creation. The world was damaged by evil, and creation fell from God’s perfect design. Brokenness touched every part of creation, sliding it’s deathly grip into the hand of beauty.
But, God loved the world and loved us too much to leave us that way. The Master Creator had a plan to one day restore all things. He would creatively carry out His plan by coming to live on this earth with us as the God-man Jesus Christ. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection broke the cycle of corruption in the world and within us.
He taught us a different way to live and He taught us how to love. By dying on the cross, all of the damage we have done died with Him. When Jesus came back to life three days later, he unleashed power so that new life is possible in us, in our relationships, and throughout the world. As we surrender ourselves to this good and beautiful God, we are invited to join with Him in restoring His peace and justice throughout creation. One day, He will make all things new and everything will once again flourish under the Creator’s good design.
Until then, we live in the Now—in which restoration of God’s good design has begun but is not yet complete. Beauty and brokenness intertwine throughout the world’s tapestry, and to live and create authentically is to hold them both in tension. At the same time, we live with expectant hope for the good and beautiful Creator’s promise to restore peace and make all things new. As we wait for the Not Yet, creativity is a mechanism for “seeing” this coming kingdom and the way it breaks into the here and now. It is a bridge between these two worlds, ushering the transcendent into our ordinary, everyday lives while turning our ordinary everyday lives into something transcendent. Through using our God-given imaginations and gifts, we help to re-enchant the world and let a good and beautiful God’s transcendence shine in.