Life throws curves at us. One day we know stuff. The next day we don’t. It creates an awkward space between knowing and unknowing. One day we’re sure about a relationship, the next day not. One day we’re sure about our spot on a team and the next day that spot is taken. Yesterday we were sure about our health and today we find ourselves waiting anxiously, until tomorrow, for the results of a test.
The ‘space between’ confounds us. It forces us to wait, reconsider, reorient. We don’t like it but it’s been a constant in our lives and will remain so.
Such is this Saturday – the ‘space between’ Calvary and the Empty Tomb.
I wonder what was going through everyone’s mind.
Did the apostles feel cheated?
Did the religious leaders feel at all guilty?
Did the soldiers even care?
Did hope die?
Did Pilate feel any remorse?
Was Barabbas indeed free?
Were expectations shattered completely?
What would I be thinking?
I’d like to think that somehow, someway I’d be able to connect the dots. That I’d be able to connect the prophecy to the person to the events. I’d like to think that.
The truth. I’d struggle.
Did I waste my time?
Why didn’t He run?
Why was hope snatched from me?
What’s going to happen to me now?
Will I ever trust again?
The ‘space in between’ isn’t often very pretty. It’s a hard place. Questions can gnaw at you. Hope runs away. Faith cowers in the face of cruel reality.
The ‘space between’ is where knowing and unknowing collide and where our humanness shows how brittle it really is Thoughts of tomorrow are pushed aside because of the fragile memories of yesterday.
It’s a good place to sit for awhile I think. We rush sometimes to the end of the story, we Christians do. We don’t want to sit where it’s uncomfortable. And yet, it is there where God often meets us. It’s in the stuff of ‘in between’ life where God often enters in and speaks and comforts, consoles and challenges.
Embrace the ‘space between’. It’s sacred space. Different from Friday. Not the same as Sunday. Still important.
6 comments:
I imagine the space in between to be the time, the span of our years after we come into manifestation, "trailing clouds of glory" and before we leave our passions for the transcendence of The Passion Play and find our way into Revelations.
Thanks Murph,
Great post! These periods of doubt and waiting are frequently where spiritual growth take place. These times jolt us out of complacency and into re-examination of attitudes, actions, relationship with God.... When God shows us the way to cope and overcome, we rejoice and become closer and garner awareness. These struggles are sometimes beyond "uncomfortable" and not all will emerge intact. Thank God for Christian love, counsel, and support. Question of the day: Would we grow without "Saturdays"?
Bob: Don't think we would grow without Saturdays. It's in the Saturdays that we gather up the strength to exercise what's left of our faith sometimes.
It's out of the 'broken places' that the seeds of new birth occur, I think.
Blessings.
Amen!
Amen!
Amen!
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