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by Lindsay Christerson
Summer can be hard. As an adult, summer is hard for me. As a working mom, it often feels full of tension. It used to be my favorite season—schools out, slower days, my birthday is in August. It used to be a tension release. And it still is in some ways. I would likely burn out at the pace we go during the school year. There are different rhythms, different schedule, but time, time is still a tension. My kids have so much of it, and I have so little. That dissonance creates tension.
Often that tension feels like ropes attached to my wrists, pulling me in two opposing directions.
I don’t normally observe these things until I get some distance, and this summer that distance came in the form of The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference in Indianapolis, IN. Our women’s ministry team joined 9,000 sisters in Christ from all over the country and the world to be encouraged and equipped in the Word. There were workshops and breakouts that encouraged us in our different contexts of ministry. It is one of my favorite things and I am beyond grateful I get to participate in every other year as part of my job!
I get to listen to my favorite parasocial worship duo—Shane and Shane—and hear some of my favorite parasocial Bible teachers. And it was here that I found my heart feeling melancholy. It just didn’t make sense.
It took me getting distance from my distance to really make that observation. (Being human can be so complicated.) After I returned home, I listened to a friend describing the tension she was feeling in her own summer situation, I felt the tension with her and recognized it in myself.
There are many definitions of tension. The first one in Merriam Webster’s dictionary is,
“1a – inner striving, unrest, or imbalance, often with physiological indication of emotion.”
I realized that much of what I had heard was deep, good teaching in God’s Word that echoed the tension I found in my heart. The teachers were frequently asking us to hold hard-to-reconcile-ideas in tension. The answer is not one thing or the other, it’s both.
Yet, we live in tension-adverse, content-heavy times.
A brief scroll will help us find ways to make budget-friendly, high-protein foods that taste just like the dessert that we are trying not to eat, while giving us productivity tips, makeup tutorials, ways to diagnose those around us with the proper mental disorder, how to stay on top of our deep cleaning schedule, and decorate the perfect zen room in our home. All of these things have just four little steps, then I too can achieve what I am currently finding hard to do. How to prioritize, how do it all, how the tension is not your problem—it’s theirs, how to ignore the tension, or let it go, or go all-in towards one pull or the other.
We want to resolve the tension.
We want to resolve our own tension, and we want to resolve it for others. It is the reason we avoid conversations with people in crisis or deep pain and grief. “I don’t know what to say.” What we mean is I don’t know how I can solve this for them. I don’t have words that will make the pain go away, the conflict resolve, the heaviness lighter. We want to say the right thing; we want to do the right thing, and not just for someone else, but for ourselves. What if we aren’t supposed to? What if entering the tension is what is actually needed?
We can have decision paralysis trying to choose, do, or say the right thing that will relieve this tension, get us back to “the good life.” A quiet mind. Shalom in our family, in friendships, in our budget, in our diet, in politics. Everything in balance.
This is a good and lofty goal. This is heaven, the “sweet by and by.” This is the picture we are working toward, but we are not there now. One day this shalom will be as simple as breathing. But the Bible calls us, in this fallen world, in this life of sorrows, to walk a narrow road, to hold hard things in tension, because sin complicates everything. We love to simplify, synthesize, and streamline everything—make it concise and digestible—but life in this world is unbelievably complex.
As much as we try to avoid tension, even the Bible gives us tension to hold:
“In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33
Well, which is it? The word here for tribulation is “thlîpsis.” It means “pressure (literally or figuratively) afflicted, anguish, burdened, persecution, tribulation, trouble,” (blueletterbible.org). So the questions is, will we feel this pressure, tension, anguish, and burden, or have you overcome the world, Lord? So often we try to resolve this tension by running toward one end or the other. We are tempted to run towards the doom of the world OR we ignore the complexity and slap a happy clappy religious cliché on it to ignore the trouble. We try to outsource the trouble—throw some money at it, go numb, avoid dealing with it. Sometimes we compartmentalize so deeply that we forget that it is there. But this verse has something in the center.
“But take heart.”
This phrase is actually one word, “tharséō.” It means, “to be of good courage, to be of good cheer” (blueletterbible.org). How in the world are we to be of good cheer in this pressure, affliction, anguish, burdened, trouble, knowing that Jesus has overcome, but we’re still living in it? It is not shalom yet. How do we hold the shalom of our eternal security and promise with the deep painful complexities of this world? Luckily, there is more to John 16:33. Backing up to the beginning of this verse, the full verse says,
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (emphasis mine)
In the world we will have trouble, in Him we will have peace.
What if we aren’t supposed to release the tension? What if we don’t opt out, or run toward one or the other opposing force in this world? What if the tension keeps us on the narrow path because it keeps us from trying to find peace in the world. It keeps us awake, keeps us from complacency and resting on our own understanding, capability, or strength. It keeps us going to the source of peace, the source of wisdom, the source of freedom as we hold the tension of this world.
Jesus walked the ultimate tight rope of perfect, sinless life, holding the ultimate dichotomy of blameless glory as he was fully God and humiliation and tribulation as He died a fully human death. And as He sweat drops of blood, asking the Lord to take the tension for Him, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” But for the joy of our salvation and reconciliation before Him, continued to hold it until the end, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42, ESV)
Now we can be forever grateful that the Father didn’t release Him from that tension, and the Son didn’t opt out under the unspeakable pressure and anguish. He was literally ripped apart by it so that we would have the power to hold the lesser tensions of living in this world. He walked the narrow path because we couldn’t. We would always opt out. We would always follow our desire for ease and false peace over tension. But IN HIM we can not only “have good courage” in the center of the tension but find shalom in the perfection of Christ and His presence with us in the tension.
There is another definition of tension, one that hits different than the rest.
“1c – a balance maintained in an artistic work between opposing forces or elements”
I pray that the Lord in His mercy and grace, keeping us in perfect peace as we abide in Him, would make our peace, peace that makes no earthly sense, in the tensions we are holding into an artistic representation to the world of Jesus’s work. That we aren’t pulled by the forces, but we hold it, move with it, use it to build strength and resilience to stay on the narrow path. That you and I don’t look to the left or the right to find peace, but we,
“Turn our eyes upon Jesus.
Look full, in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace.”
