Repairing The Breach

We can spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the future and adjusting our present to a pattern we hope will bring us the future outcomes we desire. This makes some sort of sense. We are smoothing the road that leads to the place we are going. The only issue with this is that we are often doing this to such an extent that we fail to live the current moment in all it’s fullness. A crying child doesn’t need to be told that they’ll feel better tomorrow. They need to be held and comforted now! There are breaches in God’s world that are calling us to be part of the repair. We most certainly need to sit in those breaches – in the current moment – and understand them, but we also need to act as if they matter now . Telling a slave in the 1700s that their great-grandchildren would no longer be bought and sold in a hundred years’ time would not have been bad news, but it would have done nothing to relieve the present chafing of their chains. One thing we see clearly in the ministry of Jesus is that he was present in each moment. Present with the person he was with and present within the Trinity. The kingdom of God is the current moment made alive by Christ’s presence! Often, we fear the requirements of the present moment so much that we focus on the imaginary future, but the promise remains that we will not be tested beyond our strength. Lord, help us to believe. Luke 13.34 How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! “The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.” 4 Barbara Brown Taylor 58