Tension & anticipation

The pages of a book hold magic in them. On a single page you can travel through time forwards and backwards, meet someone you will love for the rest of your life, and be whisked away to parts of the world and into rooms you’ll never actually visit. When tension is building, turning a page to a new chapter creates a sense of anticipation. Same-same story but different part unfolding. When reading a book, one may want to push the story on, resolve the mysteries, find the guilty party, or see if the young loves live happily ever after. Tension and anticipation go hand in hand in good story telling.

God is a storyteller. We are in His story. His story has tension and anticipation. His story has a hero – Jesus. His story has people who need rescuing – humanity. His story has poor refugees who are brought into a new and wonderful kingdom – followers of Jesus. His story has an enemy that must be defeated. His story has a loving father who adopts children into his family, a majestic King who rules and serves with righteousness and grace. In the end, it is the one story in which all other stories unfold.

Kingscross has been discovering her story since Father’s Day 2011. We have had our own moments of tension and anticipation. God has always given us what we have needed. Not always when we have wanted it. He has done it again. As a church we have been praying to add to our eldership team – those who pastor and lead God’s people (See Acts 20:28 & 1 Peter 5:1-4). Scripture says that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), so we have actively asked and waited for peace and faith to say: “This is right to us, but we wouldn’t dare speak for the Holy Spirit” (Acts 15:28). God has given us the right man, at the right time. What felt like waiting for an eternity, now looks like a blip in eternity. A sense of tension around growing pastoral leaders begins to be replaced with a sense of anticipation – what next God? I (MT) have already had people say to me: “Who is next, who are the fourth and fifth elders?” (It seems some anticipate a story of plodding quickly turns into a story of multiplication).

What’s your story? Are you experiencing a time of tension? Are you crying out, looking for answers, wondering what’s going on? Are you experiencing anticipation – you see the resolution coming? Tension is uncomfortable. Our lives can be filled with worry, fear, anxiety, anger, impatience, blame, sulking. We can try manufacture solutions, get around the problem, or hide away from it. However, what we’re encouraged to do is trust God with the story of our lives. Your story has magic too. The divine storyteller knew your story before the ink hit the page, and he knows what comes after the ‘conclusion’. Trusting Him means that we can anticipate a divine resolution even in the tension. We will one day discover that the tension in our stories were never as long or difficult as we thought, and the resolution was much better than we anticipated