From the shore of a lake ripples and waves lapping at the edge speak of activity. But they, in and of themselves, are not the reality or truth. They are the effect of some, more significant, cause. A rock. The wind. A boat.
In the same way, we experience ripples in life caused by actions long past. And some by realities in the future. Their very presence, though unseen now, is so significant that they reach back into our hearts today to gird us up.
Consider the book of Revelation where we read of choirs of voices and angelic shouts as being “loud”, spans of “silence”, colors like white, red, blue, yellow, and gold, things like trees, mountains, cities. All these nouns and adjectives we can relate to, but I wonder if we will realize then that we have as yet failed to understand their true meaning when we see, hear, taste, and feel them on the other side of eternity.
We perceive the ripples of these distant truths today (“loud” noises, solitary “silences”, blue skies, yellow flowers), and they speak not of their own beauty or being but of those which exist and last for eternity.
In the church we have bread and wine that reverberate with meaning infused into them by Christ as He declared that his body would broken like bread for our sins and his blood flowing like wine would seal the new covenant of our forgiveness. But as we partake of them today and remember yesterday, we also experience the truth of the “yet to come” as it ripples back through time to us.
We HOPE that the promise of the bread and wine will yet come to fruition in eternity. We do not now see all things as they should be. But we HOPE for “that day” when we drink deeply of current reality made “anew” in the Father’s Kingdom (Matthew 26). For then all that we are hoping in now (based on the past) shall inherit their true being. Bread will no longer be a ripple for we shall see the body pierced for us. Wine will be fully wine for it will release its burden of representation and be simply, fully itself evermore at the consummation of the new covenant.
For this we HOPE and long. And, with hope, we wait patiently for what is to come.
“…no eye has seen…what God has prepared” (I Corinthians 2).
