Here and now

Historical perspective gives depth to our picture of the Church and to ourselves as individual Christians, enabling us to see over the horizon of merely today. Yet history can also become a kind of false ‘ark of the covenant’ that subverts our worship ‘in spirit and truth’ by preventing us from seeing Him walking ‘in our midst’ whose death rent the veil of the temple, and blinding us from the reality of living the heavenly life on earth.

Christ is not only born, not only did He pitch His tent among us in history, but He is risen, He is truly risen, and He who was dead is alive, and alive for ever, pitching our tent for us among the Holy Trinity. As the Church believes, God in Christ becomes man, so that man, yes, we who live in love and walk by faith, become God. In Christ, Heaven did not pay earth a courtesy call, but moved in with us, not in the remote past alone, but in every moment. ‘I am with you till the end of time,’ says Jesus.

Yes, He was, He is, He is to come. The real ark of the covenant is revealed to be in Heaven, which is shown to our unveiled eyes to begin here and now, for God is with us. With us, within us, among us, and in us. History is the prophecy of the marriage of Heaven and earth, but we live its fulfillment and partake of the wedding feast of the Lamb here and now.