Tuesday, July 28, 2015

In-between time

Have you ever been in that in-between time? The time between, what's next?

I watched a great youth pastor last night preaching to a young adults conference about the distance between the disciples sleeping and Jesus praying, from over there to over THERE.

The most important point he made, it seemed to me, was that there is a tremendous distance (and time) from the alpha to the omega, from the beginning to the end. But Jesus is God of them both, and that being the case, he will carry us from the beginning to the end so it doesn't matter what the Devil does in the middle because we have the capacity, the power if you will, to make it to the end.

What matters, it seems to me then, is that we remember we will make it through. It does not matter what we're going through, it matters that we're going through.

Anytime a pastor is moved, one of the things (or two or three or four or ...) I've learned is to listen extremely hard at the beginning to the ebb and flow of the in-between time. Taking the time to learn which direction the current is flowing before one puts the canoe into the deep end is as big a lesson learned as just what exactly is my theology.

Waiting,
or plunging,
that really is the question.

Sometimes we're called to plow on.
Sometimes we're called to go get in the shade and wait.

In the in-between time, Jesus is making a way.
In the in-between time, Jesus is waiting at the end.
In the in-between time, we're not lost, we're just looking...
for the next event,
the next challenge,
the next moment we can step out and make a huge difference -- or a very small one that makes all the difference in the world.

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a drifter (homeless in the cities) man named Kevin. I could barely understand him on my cell, which was and is a problem with my cell service and an equal problem this time with the caller.

He had stopped at our church Sunday, riding his bike. He is a big man, young, very well-tanned and relatively clean. He enjoyed the service, and he talked at length to me as we finished and I greeted persons as they left. I listened to him some, said my goodbyes to others.

So, he got my cell off the bulletin cover, and he called -- for me to take him to the hospital. Seems he had gotten a job picking okra at a farm about four miles outside of Coushatta. He needed a ride. He said his fingers were about to explode.

I said I would be there shortly. On the way, I thought about how I was going to die four miles outside of Coushatta, knifed or okraied to death by a drifter (homeless in the cities). There he was, standing in the shade, his tired old bike in the sun.

I am, you might have noticed, alive. I dropped him at the emergency room, he parked his bike, waved goodbye and walked in. I asked if he had insurance or money or whatever before he got out of the truck, but he just smiled and said, "Oh, they will take care of me."

The point is this: in the in-between time is just as important as the beginning or the end if one is making good use of the in-between time. It's not just sitting and doing nothing. No, sir. It's about waiting on the one who is the sovereign of the beginning and the end.

Then, at just the right time, in just the right manner, God will knock us off our high-horse, pick up the suddenly blind individual, right them, and push them toward what will surely be their end.

From over there to over THERE is all the difference in the world, and in eternity. Find your Kevin today, while you wait.

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