Sometimes in life we are just not in control. This should be a permanent mental attitude for the Christian, at least in some senses, in terms of believing that God has and has always had the whole of human history in His hands. Things are on track for the kingdom of God right now.
But in the detail certain situations come where despite your best efforts, a combination of your own failings and another�s lack of interest contrive to make you look like a fool. Or feel like one.
I�m facing a big questions just now � in choosing some things I felt I was somehow doing the right thing by another person. My choices have been taken, then taken for granted, and ultimately the goal for which I made those hard choices has been denied.
How do feel in these situations? Have we wasted our efforts, our energies and time? My naturally inclination is to think "well, sod it. What a waste of time".
The Christian hope pervades all elements of human life and emotion. Jesus� resurrection was on the first day of the week, bringing with it the dawn of a new and better age, which will finally be consummated in His return. We live in between this time. In the �now and not yet�.
By degrees, God is working His purpose out. We need a proper perspective on the past, done and assured victory of the cross and the surely to come return of Jesus. If we place too much inference on the Kingdom yet�to-come, we cut ourselves off from the world. To quote NT Wright, if all we have to look forward to Armageddon is coming, then why bother with third world debt, climate change or acid rain? If, conversely, the cross is our only focus, and God is no longer active in the world, we are bound to trying to make the Kingdom come through our own ineffective efforts.
Yet again, there is a middle path, and it�s to be found in 1 Corinthians, chpt 3. Chapter 15, riding on the crest of a wave of a full and glorious description of the resurrection life, of the final coming of Jesus, finishes not with a fanfare of praise, but an exhortation for us to hold firm, immovable, and the assurance that our labours are not in vain.
Our labours are not in vain.
Whatever you do based on the unique, once and for all foundation of the new and living hope, the new age of God laid down in Christ will last. If you build based on the redemption of mankind back into relationship with God, out of the power of the spirit, with prayer, living a life of worship and sacrifice for the sake of Him, you do not labour in vain. It will last. Store up treasures in heaven, in your character and heart.
We are capable of being Kingdom people in the here and now. The more concerned we are with the state of our character, the more like Jesus we become now, the more at home we will be in the future.
So the hope for me � where I have strived to love as Jesus did, where I allowed God to work in me, to teach me, to refine me, where I looked to model trust and love as a choice, I did not labour in vain. I can only hope that at least some fraction of what I experienced and chose was out of that spirit.
For the rest, sinful as I am, God�s not done with me yet. Mercies new every morning. One degree at a time �
Matt
