Keeping On Though Not Yet
Were you ever going somewhere and impatient to arrive? Are we there yet? Have you ever been ill a long time and wondered when and if you would get well? When? I am sick and tired of being sick and tired! Have you ever gone without and gone seeking for it and not found it, weeks and weeks and years and years? Am I useful at all? Doesn’t anyone have any work for me?
How often do you tell others, “Not yet”? How often are you told, “Not yet”? How do we carry on, day after day, night after night, when we are fed a steady diet of stories, images, and songs that insist if we are living rightly, we will have all we need, be able to give all of our gifts for goodness right now and easily, and love and be loved without any challenges or difficulties?
There is a “not yet” that is just part of living, a working for and reaching for and growing that makes the destination sweet. Joy comes after and because of the struggle. Instant elation tends to lead to easy deflation. However, there is also a “not yet” that is used to deny, to depress, to oppress, to justify having and not having. “Not yet” should not ever mean “never,” or we lose heart. When the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon, how often did the people cry out “when?” Judging from the significant number of Biblical books from the time of that captivity and towards its generational end, keeping on, keeping heart that “not yet” was not really “never” was one of the biggest spiritual issues of the day. Any of us who’ve lived with racism, sexism, poverty, ableism, or another form of dignity-stripping institutionalized suffering know well that spiritual issue, the struggle of keeping heart and finding the holy in our long “not yet” nights and days.
One of the ways I learned to find my heart and dwell in sacred possibility was in the not yet spaces of each day – the time after night and before the dawn, the time after day and before the night. Those times of day, full of awe and wonder, did not care about what I could and could not do, about my illness or my sexual orientation, or even about my failures, my wrong-doing, my right-doing. All that stuff falls away in the place of rapture. And what comes in with rapture is a sense of reassurance, of being part of this astounding whole. And what comes with that sense of reassurance is deep gratitude and deep peace. It is a way of transcendence right in the middle of everything, in the middle of a not yet that brings healing and hope.
- Another Helping of Brokenness - March 1, 2014
- Keeping On Though Not Yet - June 11, 2012
- Spiritual Drought & Restoration - June 4, 2012
