In jars of clay (Joy in the Journey 96)

Between the solidity of God's promises and our experience of life in the here and now, there are ambiguities. Not because his promises are provisional, nor because they claim too much and cannot be truly kept. The ambiguity is down to where we’re situated, where we find ourselves: in the overlap of the ages, in the now-but-not-yet. The time of the first-fruits but still awaiting the full harvest.

Navigating that tension is one of the key challenges for wisdom and one of the true markers of our maturing as Christians. Get things out of perspective and we're easily knocked off balance. Either driven to distrust the Lord who has loved us and to doubt the justice of his reign, or forced into a pretence that all is as well as it ever could be, that we don’t struggle, not in the slightest.

The Bible encourages us to face the reality of the 'not yet' in our own experiences. We struggle, still, with sin. We feel pain as we empathise with those who carry the weightiest burdens. Along with this fractured creation we grieve and we groan. We agonise, asking who will finally be able to deliver from this collective body of death?

At the same time, by faith, “we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour.” He is our hope, in its entirety. The forerunner, the champion, who has gone on ahead of us, clearing all the obstacles of sin “by tasting death, the death deserved by us.” The resurrection of our Saviour was the first ray of light in the birthing of a new creation.

And it is this Lord Jesus who says to us, as he did to the church in Pergamum, “I know where you live.” Knows that we’re in the tension of the in-between time, in a world where evil still exists and continues to disrupt and distort. Feels with us and for us as we gather our perplexities before him in prayer, lamenting even as we rejoice.

This was graphically portrayed in the life of the apostle Paul. His testimony to the Corinthian church remains the most acute portrayal of the Christian life in this fast-fading age:

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Cor. 4:8,9)

Not denying the hardships and their pain but, along with them, knowing the vital reality of the risen life of the crucified Saviour, with and among his people. It is the Lord Jesus who is the key to every “but not” spoken by Paul.

And this contradictory experience, this wrestling on towards heaven that has both light and shade, is held within a gospel purpose that sustains our own hope:

“We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us…(2 Cor. 4:7)

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” (2 Cor. 4:10)

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Far off I see the goal

    O Saviour, guide me;

I feel my strength is small;

    Be thou beside me:

With vision ever clear,

With love that conquers fear,

And grace to persevere,

    O Lord, provide me.

Whene’er Thy way seems strange,

    Go Thou before me;

And, lest my heart should change,

    O Lord, watch o’er me;

But should my faith prove frail,

And I through blindness fail,

O let Thy grace prevail,

    And still restore me.

Should earthly pleasures wane,

    And joy forsake me,

If lonely hours of pain

    At length o’ertake me,

My hand in Thine hold fast

Till sorrow be o’erpast,

And gentle death at last

    For heaven awake me.

There with the ransomed throng

    Who praise for ever

The love that made them strong

    To serve forever,

I too would see Thy face,

Thy finished work retrace,

And magnify Thy grace,

    Redeemed forever.

(Robert Rowland Roberts, 1865-1945)