Tension

I'm sitting with classmates and our prof around the oak Round Table, waiting for a prompt. "Sum up your life in one word, the first that comes to your mind." First there's the panic of being put on the spot, then a word comes. "What word did you write?" the prof asks.
"Freedom."
"Love."
"Happiness."
"Improvement."
"Unique."
"Love."
"Adventure."
Then my turn; "tension." What? Why tension? It didn't make much sense at the time, so I dismissed it as a stupid attempt at being different. But now I think I was on to something.

A few days ago, the Witty Rat and I were having one of those random conversations of brilliance that thrill me to no end. (I gotta say, my buddy Jack nailed it: "Those are the golden sessions... when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk.") We talked about the tensions in our lives, and in our relationship with Jesus. As humans, we tend to sway from one extreme to another, but so often the Word calls us to a balance: God's sovereignty AND our responsibility, truth AND love, justice AND mercy, for example. Balance requires incredible energy (trust us, we're dancers); its not simply staying still. You have to fight hard to hold position in the middle ground.

(It's not that these things actually oppose each other; if one truly embraces justice, he or she will also have to embrace mercy. In our limited understandings however, these things often just look like opposing forces.)

But why the tension?(Now I'm not talking about the tension between good and evil or right and wrong, that's a whole different discussion; I'm talking about the balance between two truths.) Why can't we just pick one and be done? Well, I think it's because God has set eternity in our hearts. He created us for eternal relationship with Him, wouldn't it only make sense that we can't ever be done with what is meant to last forever? We can never learn enough about Him. The depth of our relationship with Him is bottomless. We can't become good enough or content with Him enough.

So let's not become lazy. Tension forces us into constant action, and that's how our relationship with Christ should be, active.

I hope this makes sense, I had a hard time trying to express it.