the consummation of history at Christ’s Second Coming
when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized
in the reconciliation of all humanity with God
and the creation of a new heaven and earth
When I awake in the morning, I am conscious of beginning to spend another day in the Kingdom.
In accordance with biblical revelation, I believe that God has been intervening over the course of the millennia since the sin of Adam and Eve to restore humanity to its truest destiny. God has been pursuing the great Reconciliation, symbolized by the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Israel’s participation in the divine pursuit, namely, Covenants, Prophets, Davidic kings, Captivity, Reconstruction, and Messianic expectation are all behind us. The Night has passed.
By his death and resurrection, Christ has spoken the definitive “yes” of humanity to God, reversing for good the downward fall of human life. In Christ, the Reconciliation has been inaugurated in power. It is the Great Dawn, which the New Testament names “the Kingdom of God.”
Yet, as Christ himself revealed, it is a Kingdom on its way to completion. The fullness of the reconciling grace of his Paschal Mystery will be experienced only at the Parousia when he returns again. Then will be the Great Day of the Ultimate Reconciliation of the human family with God, with itself, and with the entire cosmos—“New Heavens and a New Earth,” Eden Restored, the Eschaton, as revealed in the Book of Revelation.
And so, I awake each day to living with power and joy and thanksgiving in the “already” of the Kingdom, and, at the same time, hoping in, proclaiming, and activating the "not-yet" fully arrived Kingdom in the affairs of this day. I rise to celebrate what is already in Christ and actively work with fellow believers toward what is yet to be at the Second Coming.
This is the pilgrimage. This is another day of Christian spirituality.
The great temptation, of course, is to simply settle into the "already," to live the day in the "present," to be absorbed by what is immediately in front of me. But the contemplative in me will not be satisfied with that. The contemplative in me wants to view, understand, and live the current experience in the full context of Christian faith. The present is a moment in eschatological movement toward the Eschaton. The future is the destiny of the present. The Eschaton gives the present its meaning and vocation. "Here we have no lasting city" (Heb 13:14).
What happens to Christian life if it loses eschatological perspective? What happens to a child who loses sight of adulthood--where will the child end up? Living without the horizon of the Second Coming of Jesus, Christian believers become like "blind leaders of the blind . . . both will fall into a ditch" (Mt 15:14). The pilgrimage is stunted. Arrival is delayed. Christian celebration is soon poisoned by cynicism. Christian service eventually loses its momentum. Daily life in the "already" without the "not yet" becomes a hopeless, vicious circle.
Absent the Eschaton, at the end of the day, faith will not be able to rest its head on its pillow in peace.
