What is done?
Isn’t it odd that God says, “It is done!” and yet life still goes on? Life on earth is clearly not “done.” So, what does is done? A hint: not me. Not you.
The done thing is a promise; it is a statement of fact. God encompasses all. His wrapping around all things is a thing built. It is in place. A blueprint is a drawing of what is to be built. Well, God is far beyond the blueprint stage. In fact, he started off complete.
Flowing from his builtness, his completeness is a thing for us; for we incomplete. That built thing is a spring of the water of life. It flows for your now, my now.
Have you ever heard the story about the woman at the well? It is recorded in John 4. Back in that place of Jesus’ life, a competitiveness had flared up. The religious police of that day, the Pharisees, kept a dossier on people like John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. Their analysts determined that the followers of Christ were exceeding the followers of John. The balance had shifted.
Do you remember what Jesus did when he learned of these stats? Jesus left the region of Judea and headed off to Galilee. True to form Jesus did something unusual. Having a tendency toward smashing tradition he went through Samaria. Samaria was half-breed-ville and a place the Jewish nationalists shunned.
Even the non-traditionalist gets hungry, and that happened to Jesus and his crew. While the disciples were off at the village markets buying lunch Jesus stuck around by a well, and Bam! a woman showed up. Let us read what happened:
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” (John 4:7-15–ESV)
Is Jesus telling this woman about a time in heaven? A time in the new earth? Nope. See, Jesus is telling this woman to ask him for living water…right then. Can you see the similarities between John 4 and Revelation 21:6?
God may be the alpha and God may be the omega, but we do not live quite that long. We are the middle of the Oreo and God is the cookies on the outside. We must live like stuffing, but in the middles of our lives we can “is.” We can live, and living water is held out to us for our journey. Will we fret it? Will we fuss about not “being there?” Some do. I do. Sometimes I wish I had never been put on this journey, but it is what it is. Will I is?
God said this is true. God told John to write down this thing to put one’s trust in. We are not done while we walk the sidewalks of living. There are snakes and potholes along and across this sidewalk, but God is there, always there. Having set things up so that maturity is a process, so that the self is always becoming we would do well to accept it as good. We do well to recall to our minds that he will be there for us, that he is there for us. God is here while we is.
The reward
So God gives the water to us thirsty. We must conquer the problems in our is, our moments. The promises and the empowering, the strength and the along-siding 1 are all there. He is making us new, for we are part of the all-things being worked with by God.
Will we ask like Jesus told the woman? The water flows freely and is given without cost. God’s water is the water of life. Drink it, take it, and conquer the things of life by and through it. The result, the heritage of that approach, is the relationship with God. The finality will come in God’s good time.
All is not good though
8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8–ESV)
Some people on this list will look like they are doing quite well in this life, but that is a great illusion. Cowards, unfaithful, the file there is a destiny for these. Murderers, the sexually immoral 2, idol worshipers there is a fate for them. Practitioners of the dark arts and liars there is a future for them too.
The destiny, the fate, and future of these men and women is not a good finality. They do not end up in a better place. They end up in the same locale as we saw at the close of chapter 20: the lake of burning sulfur.
Leave a Reply