Already, but not yet...

This is a phrase I have heard in regard to our eternal hope..."already, but not yet"

We already have salvation, but not yet.
We already have the hope of living in peace with Christ, but not yet are able to experience the full effects.
We already have the security of Christ conquering our enemy, but not yet do we live in the fullness of that freedom.

I was reminded of that as I had the thought today, "I think I'll wait 'til Baby comes."  The way I chose to word that to myself struck me, for she is already.  She is here - very apparently here to me with the bulging belly:)  She has come, she is with us, she is our daughter, she is already, but...not yet.

To be fully with us, to experience her fully in sight and smell and hearing and touch, she needs to be born, she needs to take a living breath.

It seems that we can have three lives to live...life from creation, where God knits us together in our mother's womb (Psalms 139) to birth, where God breaths into us the breath of life (Gen. 3) (our first physical impregnation to birth experience)...to new creation (2 Cor. 5:17) where we are reborn and the Holy Spirit breaths His ever-present life into us (our first spiritual impregnation, where we are in the dark not seeing the world as God intended it to operate until we experience our spiritual birth)...to creation redeemed, where we enter into the new heavens and the new earth (Rev.21-22) and experience God in all His glory and live in eternal peace and joy in the full reality of His presence!

Would this mean that our living the Christian life in this already, but not yet stage would be a second spiritual impregnation?  Where we are alive in Christ, but in the dark to the fullness & experience of the eternal promises of salvation, peace, joy, the full glory of God.  We are already, but not yet...we're in the pregnant stage?  But do we live with that reality - the bulging, living and active reality of these already but not yet promises?

I walk around just as I did before but now with a bulging belly that gets head turns and smiles - seriously I had multiple random people just smile at me in Wal-Mart yesterday and I seriously think that it's because there's something about being pregnant - the eager anticipation of the hope and the joy of birth, it brings smiles! (John 16:21)  Spiritually speaking, as we live in the "already" and wait in the "not yet", are we as the body of Christ bulging evidences of the eager anticipation of the hope and joy of birth into the Ultimate Kingdom of God, bringing smiles because it means there will be a no more pain, no more sorrow, no more sin, everything made right, reality of Creation Redeemed...as real and true as the little girl growing in the dark of this womb!

And as we live in the darkness of this world run by Satan, the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), we can live out the reality of already, but not yet, grow in Christ and be the obvious, bulging, undeniable evidence that there is a hope worth smiling about - even in the midst of darkness, discomfort, pain, suffering!

Easier said than done, I know...But, she will be worth being joyful over amidst the discomfort & pain of pregnancy & child birth (Gen. 3:15, John 16:21) and so is HE!!!