In Between Times

Love where I’ve lived for more than 45 years, but when and where to go next?

• Lurching from headline to headline with political, climate, mental health and other pundits, but what to do?

• Retirement and empty nest, then what meaning and purpose?

• Diagnosis and treatment, what comes next?

• Inspiration and generosity that ignited The Sharing Table Project, then what visions and energy unite us to invest in ministry for the future?

No doubt you can name your own sense of being “in between,” a time between defining life events in which we wait or research or worry or over-engage or pray or otherwise seek to resolve a nagging sense of uncertainty and unknown outcomes.

Does Scripture speak to this? As The Message paraphrases it in Romans 14:6-9: 

What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli.

None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to—all the way from life to death and everything in between—not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other.

Hmmm…answerable to God, “not each other.” Redeemed to live our “entire range of life” as God’s beloved people. I notice the translation says “we”, “our”, “us” - being together. The blessings of being together as disciples of Jesus relieve us from isolated individualism, bound by personal opinions, biases, even visions of ministry that may conflict enough to become “petty tyranny” that estranges us from one another. 

Hmmm…I realize that means I, each of us, needs to soften the edges of our individualism in order to live/function as community, as God’s beloved family of humanity: as Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or independents; as wealthy, “middle class” or scraping by; as singles, marrieds or partners or parents or children; as traditionalists, conservatives, liberals or radicals; even as Christians, Muslims, humanists, or Hindus. Sounds like personally letting go of “being right,” letting go of barriers that overpower what unites us as God’s children on earth. It’s a choice. How else will we ever get to world peace or end racism or alleviate poverty or act with congregational vitality?

How? The Romans passage makes it sound so easy! “What’s important is…(do all) to the glory of God and thank God…” Not so clear and easy for my “in between” times about where to live, coping with the current cultural chaos, living with purpose in later decades of life, forgiving past hurts, and perhaps not for your “in between” times either.

But we can share a commitment to make gratitude and glory to God explicitly the heart of our daily living as First Presbyterian Church of Valparaiso. Will you commit that we, each of us together, seek ways to invest our time, energy, daily purpose as disciples in our shared community, choosing to do God’s work as the focus of each day, no matter who or what or where we are individually? This choice feels important and I commit, knowing I may need grace on occasion.

– Linda Long