In the Meantime

Because the Lord is near, both in space and time, it is possible to know real joy.  Darrell’s second point was where my focus fell during this week’s sermon. 

DJ reminds us that Paul, from a prison cell, exhorts that the Lord is near.  Johnson goes on to say, “Then why don’t you get me out of it?  A valid thing to ask the Lord to do.”  Then he says the next phrase which I could practically see written in bold,

“In the meantime, the Lord is near.”

Yes. In the meantime…. a place I feel I have been in for quite a while now.  I find myself living in the tension of trying to be and live in the present and seize what God has in the moment, but feeling like I am waiting for the next phase of my life to begin.  I am living in the meantime.  Paul reminds us that God is near, nay, He is here.  God is IN the meantime.  The One who is in the meantime is joy itself.  The One who is for me, is in the meantime.  The One who will not desert me, is in the meantime.   I loved Karl Barth’s quote, “Joy is a defiant nevertheless.”  Yes, it is. 

When I heard this phrase of “In the meantime, the Lord is near,” it reminded me of something I tell my students when they say, “I don’t know how to do this.”  I say, “You are right. You don’t know how to do this….yet.” But in the “yet” I will be with you, I will guide you, until you understand.  I think God does the same with us “in the meantime.”  In a prison cell, in a life limbo stage, in the mire, in grief, in the meantime…He is near. 

 Toward the end of the sermon, Darrell says, “Mary pondered all these things in her heart, which I think she does the rest of her life.”   You and me, sister.