Unseen yet
Forever I will keep my steadfast love for him,
And my covenant with him will stand firm. Psalm 89:28
Read Revelation 22:1—5
Living by faith, the very heart and centre, the motive power of my daily life — what I actually live for — I do not see. Not only that, so much, so very much that controls the whole approach I take to daily life, that sets my course and my goals, that I cannot truly live without, what I would call the most important thing about me, not only would I say I have not seen it, but, more to the point, I have not seen it yet. But everything about the life I don’t yet see, it seems, is the outcome and the flowering and the harvest of what I do see. All around me I see water, river, fruit; I live by the turning of the calendar; light and lamp and sun: all these things, in God’s scheme, are the promise of what I don’t see yet, promised in fulfilment. This gives me the motive to go through tomorrow with expectation.
Father of all creation, it is such a mystery that my most concrete daily need, to have a hope for the day and a desire to get up tomorrow, and to expect something out of the future, is all given to me by faith. But the Lamb who is given for the healing of the nations, who is there in your present, and will be there in my future, is given to me. He has given himself to me. He has named me. He has claimed me. He is there, where he will take me. And so I have light to see by tonight and a fine outlook, a confidence, an assurance, for the next day I am given to live.