Now, But Not Yet

I hate this time of year.

Oh, not spring.  I love spring.  But I hate this in-between time when it's not really winter anymore, but spring hasn't yet arrived.  The snow slumps in tired, grimy heaps, everything is just brown and grey and mushy, and all the trash that lay hidden by the snow is revealed for the world to see.  It's like the weather can't make up its mind if it wants to run back and hide in winter, or venture out into spring.  I know, it's not forever, and spring is just around the corner.  But right now, it's elusive.  And I hate the mushy, in-between time when it's spring but not yet spring in all its fresh, sunshiny glory.

But, inexorably, the earth's tilt is turning us toward the sun again.  Every day brings us a little closer.  The change may be imperceptible to me:  a minute or two of extra daylight each day, a slight upward trend in the temperature, the swelling of buds that I see only if I take the time to really look.  But the signs are there.  And one day, spring will erupt in all its beauty.

That gives me hope.  Because my life is so often like this time of year.  I feel stuck in something in-between.  Even the world as we know it is like that.  Theologians call it "now-but-not-yet."  It means that the Kingdom of God has come.  It's here.  It's current reality.  God is on the throne, and he has all things in his hands.  The powers of sin and darkness have been defeated.  Death has lost its sting.  Winter is broken.   And yet . . . sometimes it sure doesn't seem that way.  When I'm in the middle of the rain and the gloom, and everything is mush and mud, it's hard to believe that winter is broken.  Things are so terribly wrong.  There is so much injustice, so much hurt, and so much that isn't really anyone's fault, but just really stinks anyway.  Really, God?  Are you really on the throne?  Has the evil one really been defeated? Has death truly lost its sting?  Is your Kingdom really real?  Is it true you care?  Because right now, it sure doesn't seem that way.  I feel lost in an expired winter that can't quite find its way to spring.

But it is that way.  Jesus has come.  He died and rose again.  Winter is broken.  The Kingdom of God is here.  But not in its fullness. Now-but-not-yet.  One day, Jesus will return, more certainly than the northern hemisphere is turning back toward the sun.  And on that day, anything "not-yet" will become fully "now".  New heavens and a new earth.  No more sadness, no more pain, no more waiting and longing and dreaming of spring.  We'll be done with the slushy, mushy, indecisive, indistinct in-between time.  Spring will be revealed in all its Sonshiny glory.

I am longing for spring.