Someday and Meanwhile

i'm reading Jeremiah lately.  i don't think that's good for me.  It plays to my fears.  i don't see myself as a prophet but i do see myself in a dying culture.  i see a decline all around and i know my own suffering. i see a world on a collision course with the consequences of its sin and i see my warnings fall on deaf ears.  i fear and know Yahweh my God.  i love and trust his salvation through his Son Jesus the Christ. The problem i have is one of time.

Promises and hope are Somedays.  Some bright morning, when this life is over...i'll fly away.  There was a reason for the slave spirituals.  Their hope was not in the day to day.  It was in the Someday.  We will overcome.  In the End, our God has triumphed.  Someday my prince will come.  It's true.  We can bank on it.  God has made his promises and he's given his signs and they are solid, they are bank, they are true.  Sit secure in them.  

But the alarm clock rang this morning, not the final trumpet.  This is Meanwhile, not Someday.  Meanwhile is just that.  Mean.  Low.  Unfair.  Meanwhile is addiction, sin, persecution, labor, thorns, sieges and wicked men doing wicked things.  Someday God will call all debts due and they will either be stamped "Paid-In-Full" by Jesus or ...they won't.  But Meanwhile, we live in poverty, in want, in need and in debt.  Someday every tear will be wiped away.  Meanwhile tears are our food every night.  Someday death will be swallowed up in Victory.  Meanwhile we die and bury loved ones.  Someday we will rise to no more pain, no more sorrow, no more conflict.  Meanwhile we struggle and give up and try again and faint and the alarm goes off in the morning...

Life is lived in the Meanwhile.  Life is lived for the Someday.  Most of the secular world's hopes are just attempts to make Someday today.  Lotteries, vacations, better homes, better jobs, better hobbies, better governments are all man-made attempts at recreating Eden.  And i'm not saying don't do these things, except for the lottery, that's just a tax on the math challenged.  i'm with Yahweh when he says, "‘Build houses and live in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take for your sons wives, and give your daughters to men that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there, and you must not be few. And seek the prosperity of the city where I have deported you, and pray on behalf of it to Yahweh, for in its prosperity you will have prosperity.’" Jerry 29  i'm with Mr. Greg Forster when he says we need to be in the culture.   What i'm saying is, you got to know your limitations, you got to know the times in which you live and therefore, you got to know your God!  His name is Yahweh and He has Someday in mind.