Not yet

Imagine being a baby in the womb, never having seen the sky or felt a hug or smelled warm bread. Music is muffled. Confined to a space as small as you, how can you begin to envisage the world that awaits you?

Likewise, we strain to picture what awaits when we die. We catch glimpses of heaven when spring flowers unfurl, when skylarks wing their songs into the sky and when we gather with those we love. But we aren’t there yet.

I regularly visit prison and weep for girls for whom rape and murder are memories hard to dislodge. Heaven breaks in wonderful ways with comfort and healing but we aren’t there yet.

That “notyetness” of this life is especially evident at birth and death – as we look ahead to what is to come, labouring and groaning for the transition.

Just occasionally, someone pops a baby out without apparent effort but it’s rare. When I gave birth, I apparently made noises I’ve never made before or since. I groaned as I gave everything I had to get that baby out. Maybe that’s why tennis players make such a noise to deliver an ace!

Dying is not so different. Occasionally, crossing into heaven involves simply falling asleep. But for many, there is a labouring and groaning akin to childbirth to make that extraordinary transition into glory - a glory that Paul promises will far outweigh the labour pains we experience here.

This month, I hugely rejoiced in the birth of a precious grandson, Simeon whilst also mourning the death of a dear friend. Romans 8 has been my lens - Paul frames our great transitions with hope, telling us we groan because all creation is in labour (v22), but our groaning is not despairing, it is not like my dog’s hurrumph when he is told to settle, it is not a giving up. It is like the groaning of a mother working to bring her child into the world. It is like the frantic beating of a butterfly’s wings in the chrysalis without which it will never fly.

God promises that he can work even all this for his good purpose - to make us like His beautiful son. This is the greatest transition of all - our groans are not purposeless - we are waiting “eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (v23). 

Wonderfully, God does not leave us to groan alone. God himself joins us. The Spirit groans with us – interceding for us. The Spirit helps us in our weakness (v26). Oh, I love that verse.

At the toughest times in life when we hit the NOT YET, when the labouring and the groaning are intense and we feel weary, longing for God’s new creation in our lives and in our world – God wants to remind us that we are not alone and what awaits is unimaginably amazing - “the freedom and glory of the children of God” (v21).