Between Hope and The Dream In the Land Between

There is a place we all hate to find ourselves.  In the land between.  Between one good situation and the next good situation.  Between a good period of life and the next good period of life.  We’re presently in that place, and it’s hauntingly familiar.  Still, we’re God’s people; we learn what we can whilst we’re here, and we don’t give up.

The land between good places is littered with bitter, humiliating, and despairing experience.  This is land between hope and the dream, never quite either, terrain tantalisingly alien to both.

The land between is where we learn to stay in the day whilst holding onto the vision hoped for, though not yet seen.

In the land between we learn not to focus on being in the land between.

It doesn’t mean that being in the land between is something we should avoid.  We cannot avoid it, so why try?  Though the land between is a wasteland, it piques growth opportunities, so we sit in the ugliness of those emotions, collect conscious memory of them, and, with Jesus there, we venture out of that wilderness, into the present moment, believing God has a plan to get us to our dream.  We get ready, and we stay ready.

The land between is a topography of complaint and exasperation, but it is also a vista replete with the provision of guidance for the humble of heart.

Jesus teaches us to trust when every scaffold of security is ripped from our grasp.

And then, as we finally envisage the dream emerge into reality, we find our newfound trust is indispensable equipment for what God has been preparing in advance for us to do.

The land between is preparation ground for the ultimate purposes of God through us.