Why it’s good to find ourselves in the place of the in-between

By Mark A. Taylor

Rereading this post from about a year ago reminds me that all of us are sustained by fragile threads of hope, memory, and faith. I need not detail the challenges to my life and the lives of those close to me to affirm that the thoughts I wrote then still apply to our situations today. Whatever stress you’re feeling, whatever tragedy you’re facing, perhaps you’ll find encouragement here.

“Mark, I’ve had a stroke.”

I thought my friend on the other end of the line was joking. He’s always joking.

“Are you serious?”

He was not joking. He was speaking to me on his cell phone from his hospital bed, three days after the life squad had rushed him to the hospital. He sounded as strong and chipper as ever (that’s why I thought he was kidding). But he needs a walker to stand steady. (“I’ll go home with it,” he told me. “But they say I’ll get rid of it after a while.”) And they were still running tests to figure out why the stroke had happened. The lunch date I had called to schedule won’t happen anytime soon.

Jars of clay

Later that day, I prepared Dean’s June 24 devotion for posting. He quoted Paul’s metaphor from 2 Corinthians 4: “We have this treasure in jars of clay.” And I thought of my friend in the hospital, just another of all the living examples of that picture parading before me this year.

It’s been a season of death, I hate to say, and my inbox displays a steady stream of thank-you notes for memorial gifts I’ve sent to remember lives so very well lived.

Meanwhile, among the living, the Enemy does his dirty work. A dynamic preacher, now retired but still speaking in churches across the Midwest, shares on Facebook that cancer has invaded his body in several places. Cancer is the problem for a Christian college administrator’s wife, too, who must endure painful skin grafts to repair the damage from invasive surgeries. And just a few days ago, cancer finally took another preacher (I’m guessing he’s about my age) after a couple of years of heroic struggles, radical surgeries, lifestyle adjustments, and uncounted visits to doctors, hospitals, and labs. Add one more memorial gift to my list.

In between

His widow pointed her friends to the blog post of a Christian mother who wrote about sitting with a family at their father’s deathbed. “This is the sacred place of the in-between,” the blogger wrote:

The place hair is stroked and hands gently held. Hands that have rocked babies and hugged grown children, that have served lemonade on a hot day and played checkers on a cold winter night. Hands that have held fishing poles and played silly tricks on little grandkids. Hands held for the very last time. . . .

This is the sacred place of the in-between. . . .

The place where hymns are sung and memories linger on like their presence in the room. Laughs come through tears, and silent sobs replace the words we try to say. But we can’t find the words, can we? Because how do you fit a life’s worth of memories into a few sentences? . . .

This is the sacred place of the in-between.

The place where heaven meets earth, the moments we wait for and dread all at once. The minutes we want to pass quickly, yet hang onto for dear life. . . . This is when the sacred place of the in-between becomes the place of the most holy. The moment they see Jesus and it takes their breath away.

Her picture of that final vigil touches something raw and deep inside me. I’m realizing that in a sense, all of us are in the place of the in-between. As one Bible version puts it, “Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, and then it’s gone.” As we come to the age when peers and mentors all around us are dying, we see the truth in new ways.

Old people’s talk

We laugh with our friends about “old people’s talk,” in which dinner table conversation always makes room for updates about maladies, doctor’s visits, and prescription plans. I realized this week I’m now doing physical therapy exercises to address pain and weakness in three parts of my body: neck, lower back, and feet. I’m not gonna tell the doctor about my aching thumb and wrist.

I spoke with an 83-year-old friend planning to move with his wife into an apartment created for them on the lower level of his daughter’s and husband‘s home. “My body is breaking down,” he told me. “I can’t walk as far or as fast as I used to.” He’s still actively serving, in demand to speak and counsel. But he knows he’s living in the place of the in-between. “This will be our last move,” he said.

He spoke matter-of-factly, with some nostalgia I suspect, but no complaint. I think he realizes the beauty in “jars of clay.” It would be a depressing picture— weathered surfaces and hairline cracks and chipped rims—if it weren’t for the treasure inside.

God’s genius

“There is complete genius in God’s plan,” Dean wrote. “By using weak and fragile containers as carriers of the treasure, God made visible the miracle of the treasure itself. . . . Simultaneously God builds inner strength and godliness in us while our outer self wears out. . . . As we offer our fragile selves to God each day, he responds with more grace, more mercy, more love, and more power.”

This beautiful treasure, the good news of God’s potential and purpose to redeem and transform, sustains us. But we all know it’s there for far more than self-help. A clay pot ready for the trash heap can hold a plant whose blossoms dazzle. And even though our bodies may be worse for wear, we can still make our lives reflections of God’s beautiful goodness. In a world bothered by so much that’s bad, we can see it’s never too late to bloom.

Truth be told, we have always been frail, but the needs around us will always be many. And we’re strong enough today to be surprised by what God can do with what we give him. Until our jars of clay crumble, we have time to share the treasure inside.

Photos by Sharon McCutcheon and by Csaba Talaber on Unsplash

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