The saved world

Could someone talk about how they see the world as "saved," or "being saved." It looks severly "unsaved" to me, tragic, a mess, unredeemed.

This quesiton came to me as I was going about my work and my answer was:

As I understand it the salvation has happened. It happened in the life, death and resurrection of the one who was fully human and fully divine. But that doesn't mean that we can see or experience the affects of that salvation. We are in the here, but not yet - the birth pangs - the war has been won, but not everyone has laid down the weapons - the climax has happened but the wrapping up of the story - the denoument - is still going on. And these are all analogies and metaphors and attempts to explain what I cannot fully express in owrds, but still feel and believe.

Yet that answer, and any answer I can give, remains incomplete. I would love to be able to explain how this wolrd that has been saved and redeemed from sin is still such a sinful place. Where people go hungry and unclothed, where the stranger and the one who is different is dispised, where the poor are oppressed and the rich walk over others the realm of God seems far away. But in the midst of this the widow puts a coin in the offering for charity, abalnd man listens for someone who can't hear while the one who is deaf watches for one unable to see. The one who is told that he has no family because he is gay cares for the other dying of AIDS and in the midst of this pain and suffering and rejection the Christ is found.

And at the last day some will be told that they didn't meet the one the claimed to have served (Matthew 25:31ff.) and others will find that they met their Savior in unexpected faces and places. (Luke 24:13ff.)