Many adventures—whether we choose them or they choose us—include a stretch when we feel miserably stuck between where we started and where we want to be.
Marathon runners talk about “hitting the wall,” but they’re certainly not the only ones who experience it.
The long journey of life is really a series of mini-journeys, during which we’re usually challenged, at some point, to keep going when we’d rather give up.
The example I’ll offer here is insignificant and shallow, but it is the thing that recently prompted me to think about middle-of-the-journey angst.
It began while I was simply sitting at home feeling incredibly thankful for my surroundings.
I was thankful that I can look out my windows and often see deer and turkeys roaming through the woods and across the pasture. (Whoa, steady there, you salivating hunters.) Inside, I get to enjoy comfortable rooms with colors on the walls that feel warm and homey to me.
I appreciate these blessings all the more because a few years ago, I didn’t have them. During a year of white-walled apartment living, I felt like an artist with tied-up hands, surrounded by blank, unpaintable canvasses.
No matter how many pictures I hung, that place always felt bland, claustrophobic and impersonal. I knew something better was coming, but I first had to go through this blah, in-between time.
Waiting to move out of an apartment is not a big deal, but pressing forward to see other hopes and dreams realized is very big, indeed. Things like restored health, reconciled relationships, or the greatest hope of all—heaven.
Most especially heaven.
For Christians, our entire earthly existence feels like one long in-between time, a relatively colorless span of years before we finally get to experience life as it was meant to be lived.
We wait … and wait… and wait … to one day perfectly and constantly bask in the soul-satisfying love of God in a place with scenery and colors that transcend anything we can now imagine. Our longing for that day can be profoundly painful, especially when the evil of this fallen world touches us up close and personally.
We’re thankful we’re not where we used to be—in spiritual darkness and separated from our loving Creator—but we’re always keenly aware that we’re not home yet.
I heard a preacher once describe our situation this way: “It’s Friday … but Sunday’s comin’.”
How appropriate on this day before Easter Sunday.
Things must have looked mighty bleak to Christ’s first disciples on the day after He was crucified. I imagine they felt confused, fearful, disillusioned and maybe even abandoned by the One they’d given up everything to follow. Jesus had explained what would happen, but the Scripture says they still didn’t understand He would rise from the dead three days after his crucifixion.
If they’d only grasped and believed what was coming, then this middle day—Saturday—would not have been filled with fear and grief, but rather with joyous anticipation. If they’d understood the brilliant, Technicolor miracle on its way, the darkness of these in-between hours would have been dispelled.
But they didn’t. And often, neither do we. It’s difficult to stay focused on “then” when “now” presses in so hard upon us. This world does its best to obscure our view and snuff out our hope.
The Bible says, “For the joy set before Him, He (Jesus) endured the cross…” (Hebrews 12:2).
For the joy set before us, we can endure, too.
Take heart. It’s Saturday, but Sunday’s comin’.
“… the sufferings of this present timeare not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18