Recently my husband and I were enjoying dinner out when he asked me a very insightful question. He wanted to know what things I had learned lately that had changed my theological perspective. It didn’t take long for me to offer up a few examples of things I had learned through my seminary classes or personal studies that have shifted my understanding in a profound way. This has been one of the great gifts and privileges of seminary. I have had access to a breadth of knowledge and a community of students and professors that has both challenged and encouraged me.

As my mind has expanded and been challenged to work harder learning Hebrew and reading theologians like Karl Barth, John Calvin and Frances Turretin, my heart has started undergoing its own transformation. It’s hard to describe what that has been like. What I knew about the truth in my head has penetrated more deeply into my heart and that has sharpened the dissonance between the false stories the world tells and the true story of all things contained in Scripture. That dissonance has created in me a deeper ache for the consummation. Amy Baik Lee wrote a lovely book about this called This Homeward Ache. She explains that many people, Christians and unbelievers, have sought to give a name to this feeling we have when we see something beautiful and profound in this life that makes us long for more. I loved her book, but the feeling I am trying to describe is different than a longing for the consummation. Theologians often use a phrase to describe this tension between the way things are now and what they will be in the consummation. They call it the ‘already but not yet’ or the ‘now and not yet’. What I’m trying to describe is not the straining forward to the consummation, the not yet, but an embracing of the dissonant now.

But who wants to embrace dissonance? It’s a tension that longs to be resolved. But dissonance is also a sign that something is off, that something doesn’t match. When dissonance resolves in music there’s a sense of satisfaction but what if we’re supposed to embrace the dissonance of the now as we wait for the resolution of the not yet?

We were made for something more than this life and if we spend our days on earth trying to avoid or temporarily resolve the dissonance we may find ourselves walking according to the siren song of the world. There is a cosmic drama being played out around us and above us and those who have the wisdom to discern the times will be among those who courageously embrace the dissonance of the now. They will allow it to urge them on in prayer, lamenting the way things are as they also plead for his kingdom to come and his will to be done. Sooner than we think, the not yet will be now, the dissonance will be resolved and that ache will be completely fulfilled as all that was a mere shadow will burst forth with consummating joy.

Music has a way of capturing things we can’t put into words. When I was a young musician in college and newly converted to Christianity, I discovered this quote thought to be inscribed on a German opera house:

God gave us music that we might pray without words

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings was originally written for string quartet but is often played by full orchestra. It is full of dissonance, but a kind of dissonance that is hauntingly beautiful. If I were to choose a piece of music as the theme song of the dissonant now, this would be it.