The Spirit of Forgiveness Part II

Today’s blog post is the second of five in a series on The Spirit of Forgiveness by Marc Fisher, my husband, for the week of Advent.

“And you shall make a mercy seat (a covering) of pure gold, two cubits and a half long and a cubit and a half wide” (Exodus 25:17, AMP).

Can you live with incompleteness knowing it precedes something whole that is yet to come?

It is here but not yet here.

It is like the kingdom of God is here yet not yet here.

We have it in part but will have it in full.

Man tends to not like things in part. But the distinctive of the church is to live with incompleteness, to be comfortable with something that is partial that will one day be completed and to live as though it is already in hand.

As in our broken relationships, to live under that tension of something that has not yet been resolved, not demanding terms that will complete it instead waiting on God to perfect in His completion not only something that will alleviate that human tension but also glorifies Him. That is our calling as believers, to be willing to live with the tension of incompletion, confident that when the resolution comes it will not only be answer to the agitation as applied to the human nature but will glorify God.

The very reason for the rupture is so that a solution can come that will not only please man, though it undoubtedly will, but that God will be all the more glorified. For that reason we can bear the tension, for the glory of God we must always raise far above our own human infirmities.

Think about this for just a moment.

Of all people, Jesus, who was perfect, deserved to be among only perfection and yet was willing to bear the imperfection of man because He knew the completion was yet to come and that in it God would be made great among the nations.

He bore the incompletion and because of that by His stripes we are healed. [Isaiah 53:5] In bearing the tension you also are part of God’s design in proclaiming His Son to a lost and dying world through His church. It is in His plan that His church, as an example of reconcilers, bear testimony of Himself, as the ark bore the testimony of God.

[Picture taken from Pinterest via The Life, Art, and Times of Fudge]