A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it.
~Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899)
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He himself is our Peace … Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. …for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest
~ montage from Ephesians 2, John 15, and Hebrews 4
Oh beloved, it is true. G_d has put within us a drive to live and to move, for in Him we do have our being. There is a problem though. In our motion, we sometimes begin to feel that we have to continue making progress towards the things which we think are ahead.
It’s too hard.
I’ll never be perfect.
I am so broken.
I can’t make it.
I’m too hurt.
It’s impossible.
Could it be that somewhere along the way we simply missed the simple truth about the Gospel? When we changed our minds about how we were to be saved, we certainly realized that it was no longer us who could do the saving. But, perhaps we missed the profundity of our salvation. For often, the simplest things are the most profound.
We are saved. Utterly. Completely. Mightily. Totally. Saved. And even though, there is around the edges of our existence, a broken and cracked crust, there is within us a now a growing core that is complete and whole and more pure than gold. We have been made into the very righteousness of G_d in Christ.
“So,” we say, “what does this mean for me? This seems but a theological statement, for I sure don’t feel like this ‘righteousness’ most of the time.”
Everything.
G_d does not look at us from the outside, nor does He view us along some linear timeline. He sees us in eternal wholeness. We are 4-dimensional masterpiece He is building to inhabit eternity with Him, and He doing His work on an eternal pallette unconstrained by the mere limits of time and chance. We are an exquisite spiritual sculpture in the very able Hands of the very Master Artist of the universe.
Can we see it? In eternity, we are already what He is making us into. And while the rivers of Living Water He has set forth within us, are even now doing sculpting from the inside, they are following a course set and formed by His eternal and unchanging hand. He is already at the place and the person we will be on that Day.
Perfect.
Nothing can change what He has set in motion. Not because G_d is just infinitely bigger and stronger than anything else (though He is this). It is because whatever He has set into motion is already done. There is no chance or time or waxing or waning in Immutability. There is but an ever-fulfilling and ever-purposeful wisdom and beauty in the fabric of the Great and Infinite One who is Love Himself.
So beloved, fear not. The end is not just near. It is imminent. The perfection and beauty He is growing within you cannot be held back. We may, for a moment dam up some of these tides of His water flowing within us. But, the backlog only builds pressure within us which breaks away even larger pieces of our outer, fleshly crust when it breaks free.
Rest friend. The work is done. Just allow Him complete it.
