I think we often consider fulfillment a once-and-done sort of thing. Once a prediction is fulfilled, that's all she wrote, with nothing more to see.
But fulfillment is a many-layered thing. An employee doesn't do a job for one day and consider their obligation fulfilled. A person doesn't commit before God to love, honor and cherish their partner for a couple weeks and then wander off. Commitments, like promises, are fulfilled not in single moments but in long arcs.
How much moreso the promises of God. Christmas comes at the end of a long period, and yet the strains of that ancient longing remain. Christ's coming marked the end of injustice, but our next president is a rapist, a bigot and a convicted con man elected with the overwhelming support of white evangelicals. The Resurrection has begun, but people die by the millions every day, often of things we could prevent.
The Kingdom of God, it is said, exists in a liminal space: here and not yet. By faith, we celebrate the "here" even as we ache amid "not yet."
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