And at the End — The Thrones Filled

Everything so far has been about now. But the love of God pouring through you now is only the first light of a morning that has not fully come. I have to show you the end of it, because the end is what the whole creation is waiting for — and waiting is exactly the word Scripture uses.

"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God." — Romans 8:19 (NET)

The word Paul uses there is the picture of someone craning their neck, straining forward, watching the road for someone they are longing to see. The whole creation — the groaning, broken, beautiful world — is standing on its toes, watching the road, waiting for the children of light to be revealed. Not waiting for its own end. Waiting for you. For the moment when the people in whom the love of God has been quietly pouring all their lives are finally, fully, unmistakably shown for what they are.

Here is what that day holds. The empty thrones of the council — the seats the ancient sons forfeited — will be filled. Not metaphorically. Scripture says it as plainly as it says anything: the Lord's people will judge the world. Do you not know that we will judge angels? The beings who were old when the earth was young, who sang at the foundations and then governed unjustly, will answer to the ones God made from dust and filled with His love. The last will be first, all the way up to the throne of the universe. Those who let the love of God pour through them in kitchens and at gravesides and on hard roads will be given, at the end, the very governance the great spirits failed to keep.

But — and you must hold onto this or you will misunderstand the whole thing — it is not a promotion you climbed to. It is a gift you received, the same gift, only now complete. You do not arrive at the throne by your achievement any more than you arrived at sonship by your effort. You are seated there because you were in Christ, who won it, and who invites you to sit where He sits.

"To the one who is victorious I will give the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with My Father on His throne." — Revelation 3:21 (NET)

With Me on My throne. Not your throne, earned by your striving. His throne, shared by His grace. The victory was His. The seat is His. You are there because He wanted you there, the way the running father wanted the prodigal at the table — not because you finally measured up, but because He loved.

And what will you actually be, on that day? You will be what you have been becoming all along, only with nothing left to dim it. The iron will have been in the forge so long that it is all light. The love that was poured into you and that you let flow, in your small and costly and unspectacular way, will be the whole substance of you — not occasionally, not when you remember to, but fully, freely, forever, the way it is in God Himself. You will love the way He loves, because His love will have so completely filled you that there is nothing left in you that resists it. The mirror that spun to face the wall in the garden will be turned fully back toward the Light, catching all of it, throwing all of it back. You will, at last, perfectly and forever, look like the One you came from.

That is what you are for. Not in the end instead of now — in the end because of now. The love pouring through you today, weak and intermittent as it feels, is the same love that will blaze through you on that day, complete. The kitchen and the throne are the same story. The towel and the crown are the same love. What begins in you now as a flicker ends in you then as a fire that fills the empty seats of heaven and helps God govern a healed and singing world in justice and mercy forever.

This is the graduation the whole school has been moving toward — though even that word is too small, because you never stop being the student and He never stops being the Teacher and the love never stops deepening. But there is a day when the long apprenticeship in the love of God comes to its flower. The iron that has been in the forge a lifetime is, on that day, all light. Everything you struggled to learn — mercy that did not come naturally, patience that cost you, love poured out where nothing came back — all of it, finally, is simply who you are, the way it has always simply been Who He is. The beginner becomes the thing the lessons were always making. And the high calling that should have made you tremble turns out to have been, all along, the most loving thing God could possibly have offered a child of dust: not a burden, but the slow, patient, costly gift of making you able to love the way He loves, forever.

The morning stars sang at the first creation because it was beautiful and they could not help it. On that day, the children of light — the children of dust the proud spirits looked down on, filled at last to overflowing with the love of God — will join that song. And this time it will not be only the angels singing over a world being made. It will be the redeemed, singing over a world being healed, by the love that poured through them to do it.