Present Hope

In the beginning, you were there.

That’s not some trite nicety or intellectual abstraction, but the poignant proclamation that power was present.

That — in the early sunless mornings of first moments — the Creator was immanent, hovering over the surface of the deep, daydreaming daffodils and delighting in delicacies that defied reality.

In the beginning, you were there.

Spying the vastness of wasted space, you invaded this desolate place — never content to leave chaos content you spoke life and light into the wild waste. Each word weaving your will into being.

A lone poet propagating pomegranates, poppies, and quadrupedal platypuses.

With your hands you crafted my form, carving clay clumps into carapace. Carefully calculating the complexities of my cardiovascular controls.

In the beginning, you breathed and life filled my body. Every inhale the summary of my being, every exhale the culmination of my creation.

There you named me, image bearer, giving me a ingrained indelible identity as a son and daughter of the immanent I Am.

Placing me in that once wasted space and commissioning me to drink deeply the delights of your domain.

In the beginning you were there, and it was good.

And in the aftermath of human abandonment, you were there.

When the myth of the creaturely transcendence revealed itself to a be a shallow lie comprised of a hallow promises and catastrophic consequences. You were there.

When human hearts broke, viewing the fallout of the formerly fertile. You were there.

Never content to leave chaos content, you invaded this desolate space and spoke life and light into the wild waste.

Redeeming what remained, you entered shame with love. Insecurity with identity. Breathing grace into broken bodies. Your every inhale the hope of renewal, every exhale the actualization of restoration.

In the aftermath, you were there.

And in the caged cries of Hebrew captives, you were there.

The groans of the godly gave way to the ground shaking invasion of the greatest of Gods.

Before you the pantheon of panderers fell prey to present power. And From the dust you delivered the drudges, forming the forgotten into a family.

In caged cries, you were there.

And in the demise of nearly divine demigods you were there.

When the hopeful heir spied her from high upon his house top, he leveraged power and position, teetering on the tell of transcendence, to satiate unsatisfiable sensuality.

There you stepped in, calling kings to account for their crimes, and covering them in compassion when they cried out in conviction.

In the demise, you were there.

And in the exhausted exasperation of exiles, you were there.

When fathers were forced to lead families into a foreign land, facing eastward faraway from the familiar. Image bearers bent at the knee by Babylonian bygones.

But you determined deliverance, deciding decades before that you would not forget the forsaken — forever faithful — never far from the feeble and failing.

Rescue has always been your response.

In the exhaustion, you were there.

And in the silent centuries, you were there.

Between the beginning, the before, and the becoming you were still there.

For, 4 millennia we can trace your intervening presence on the pages of this periscope.

Each new event an episode of grace in the unfolding narrative, sovereign sign posts and symbols signifying salvation. Shadows of a soon to come substance.

But now, the substance of the shadow has arrived. The great advent of our awaiting expectations. Revealed and yet reviled. Redeeming and yet rejected.

The great star has condescended and collided with our burnt up broken reality. The word made flesh, God man son, hope made present.

You are the incarnate Immanuel, God with us, Never content to leave chaos content, you invaded this desolate space and brought life and light to this wild waste.

You are Jesus, and you are here.