The Kingdom is a little like this – you very rarely get to have a season of joy and victory, and then you leave that and enter a season of sorrow and defeat! Instead we tend to have both joy and sadness simultaneously; we experience victory in one area and defeat in another.

I have found one of the most helpful metaphors for understanding this tension in life are parallel train tracks. Your life runs along these 2 tracks constantly – at any moment you are full of joy and contentment – and simultaneously you can equally feel pain and disappointment. We even experience this in God’s nature – He is at the same time a God of love AND a God who judges. He is full of mercy, yet jealous for purity.

In our understanding of the Kingdom we call this experience eschatological tension. The Kingdom is here – but it is yet to come! It is now – but not yet! We struggle to live with this tension and the temptation is to break the tension and to hold only 1 truth, especially when we are considering why some are healed and some aren’t, why sometimes good things happen to “bad” people and bad things happen to “good” people, and so on. The agony and ecstasy of life. So we are tempted to break the tension and believe only 1 of the truths- either the Kingdom is here right now and everyone should be healed and happy and prosperous. Or – the Kingdom is yet to come so right now no-one will get healed and suffering is all we should expect. But both of these truths become errors without the tension of holding them both to be true at the same time.

So may God meet you between the tracks, and may you know His Presence in you and around as you move forward in life, at one moment in joy and in other in sadness. He is there in the midst of you!

Picture a person standing upright – when they are in a balanced position they are in fact going nowhere – they are stationary. But to make progress – to walk – you must actually throw yourself off balance. So you push a leg forward – and then when you are off balance you need to bring your other leg forward or you will fall over!! (watching a baby take its first steps is a wonderful example of lack of balance leading to growth and progress). But the wonderful result of being off balance is that you are making progress – you are going somewhere! And when you stop – you are balanced!

So what is happening to you that feels like it is pushing you off balance? Maybe you need to take a step in that direction and then see where the next step will take you. Don’t strive for balance – go for growth.