This 'now, not yet' tension

This 'now, not yet' tension in the life and experience of a Christian is interesting. It seems too Rube Goldberg for anything to do with God's great plan of redemption. You're in Christ, in the heavenlies NOW, yet you are still in the flesh, in the fallen world, waiting for the completion of it all.

Now I know the Bible speaks directly to this waiting period and talks of patience and trial and the positive effects of it and so on. Running your race to the end, all that.

But also there is something in the now, not yet reality of our situation (the tension) that seems to call for being reconciled.

I think we are called to reconcile it by living NOW *as if* we already have all that is given in the consummation. That is the task, so to speak. That is doable, and is what we are called to do. The tension births this that is new.

It is here that all the teaching regarding being and vertical development, level of being, comes in. Presence. We are, for instance, in heaven NOW, so, to indulge resentment now at worldly things is really very beneath us. It's empty. The Bible also has clear teachings on this being and having now everything. Ask and ye shall receive is one.