KINGDOM INTERSECTION

Everyone is blogging, everyone! Ok not everyone is blogging but a lot of people are! "So why are you blogging?" A church sister asks, as we were talking in the supermarket, (pregnant pause) "to glorify God of course!" I answered as if the reason should have been apparent, but was it? I thank God for that sister; I thank God for that pause, though lasting only seconds, it was enough to have me ushered into the presence of the Lord with that question, like a huge elephant in the throne room and with God with expression of "well, why are you?" That question needed to be asked; my heart needed to be realigned; my pride placed in check. God used a trip to supermarket to rid my heart of any hypocrisy, any expectation or desire for grandeur, for the time being at least; I'm sure I'll be in need of a follow meeting form time to time. Yes! I am blogging to glorify God and praying that by the enabling of the Spirit I would be found faithful to the task.

I can remember the first time I was introduced to this phrase; its obvious oxymoronic pronouncement was just one more worldview shattering truth which was redefining Christianity as I once knew it. Having been given new ears for the Gospel - the life, death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the centrality of that message through which God the Spirit not only gives new life but also sustains new life (1 Cor. 15:1-2) - “Already But Not Yet” was quickly, if not instantly, ushered from oddity to beautiful Gospel paradoxical truth in my mind and spirit. “Already But Not Yet” is used to describe a tension within scripture, where both present and future realities converge; it refers to the time between the first and second comings of Jesus Christ or “the last days” where this age and the age to come overlap. It is in this period that the New Testament was penned and in which we still live today. It is in this intersection where Christians (those who have repented and be...