Living Tomorrow's Life Today

"...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come" — 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

When you first move into a house, there is usually one room that becomes the place for everything you do not know what to do with yet. A few unopened boxes. Something broken you mean to fix. A lamp with no place to go. It is not a decision so much as a habit. Life is busy, so you make the other rooms livable first, and that room becomes the place where unfinished things wait for another day to find their place.

Then someone needs the room. A friend is coming to stay for a while. Family is visiting. Suddenly the room can no longer stay the place where everything gets postponed. The boxes have to be opened. The things inside them have to be sorted out. What was easy to ignore when the room was only yours becomes harder to ignore when someone else is about to live there too.

Maybe some parts of life with Christ look more like that than we expected. Scripture says, "...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV). The new life has already begun, yet some rooms stay crowded because we keep living yesterday's life in them, even after Christ has made them His. Colossians says we have "...taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self..." (Colossians 3:9–10, NIV). The room belongs to Him now, and He does not mean for it to stay crowded forever.

And because Christ "...is your life" (Colossians 3:4, NIV), you do not walk into that room alone. He does not open the door only to point at the clutter. He comes in with you. One box holds an old fear you still listen to too quickly. Another holds a mercy you have kept postponing. Another carries a conversation you know needs honesty, but you keep putting it off. Colossians does not only tell us to take off the old self. It also tells us what belongs in the room now: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and love (Colossians 3:12–14, NIV). The room is not cleared so it can remain bare. It is cleared so Christ's life can fill that space and bear fruit through you.

You do not have to empty the whole room today. But you can open one box at a time with Him. Let Him show you what no longer belongs, what needs to be dealt with honestly, and what He wants to grow in its place. So perhaps the place to begin is not with the whole room, but with the box closest to you now. What have you kept postponing because you did not know what to do with it? When Christ clears things out, He is not taking life from you. He is making room for more of it. Jesus said, "...every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful" (John 15:2, NIV). Sometimes the clearing is not a loss at all. It is how He makes room for life to grow. What He begins clearing today may be one more place where His life becomes visible in yours.

Prayer

: Christ, thank you that you have not only promised me a new life, but come to live it with me now. Show me the room I keep postponing, and give me grace to open one box with you today. Keep us close. Amen.