Life in the in-between
Lately, I feel like I’ve been living between two different worlds. In one, God exists and everything has a meaning and a purpose. Day-to-day events and encounters feel ripe with promise; if I’m paying attention, God will show me Himself in the smallest thing. My actions and hopes and dreams seem to carry weight far into the future. I feel sure that I am part of a grand plan. In the other life, this is all there is – what I see right in front of me and around me, this is it. Everything is merely coincidental, there’s no rhyme or reason for my life existing on this planet, I am just as much of a coincidence or accident as anything else.
I seem to bounce back and forth between these perspectives constantly, and I finally figured out what it is:
Hope is hard work.
I’m following a family’s heart-wrenching story on Instagram and in the midst of their daughter’s hospitalization, the mother, Lindsay Sherbondy shared these words:
“I think the word “hope” gets watered down sometimes. It’s a word that people might think seems airy or fluffy or nice. But the thing about hope that only people who have had to have hope know is, it’s 100% not nice. It’s not fluffy. In fact, it can be excruciating… Having Hope in this storm is the hardest thing I have ever done, because it goes against all logic and reason.”
They are holding onto hope through an incredibly difficult situation but I feel like her words also apply a lot to everyday life as a believer.
Hope can make us look silly. Faith is often foolishness to the world. From the perspective of a non-believer, the way we live our lives is pretty ridiculous. I don’t think anyone would ever choose to be a christian if God didn’t call them. The way Christ calls for us to live and believe goes counter to everything in me: I WANT to be selfish. I WANT to just go my own way. I WANT to live without a care in the world. I WANT to live life on my own terms. So to set that aside and pursue a Christlike life… it’s really really hard and would be impossible without the Holy Spirit. Even WITH the Holy Spirit, I fail all the time.
Our faith almost always “goes against logic and reason.” We stumble along, trying to do what we think God would have us do, and often getting that wrong. We hold up ideals and beliefs that can seem crazy when spoken out loud.
And – it’s hard.
It’s hard to keep hoping day after day that what we do matters, who we are matters, and that God has a purpose and plan for it all. It’s hard to keep hoping that our days are numbered, intentionally measured out by God, and that every element of our lives is within His control. It’s hard to hope when it would be so much easier to just give up the ideas of miracles and meaning and accept that life just is what it is.
But we keep believing.
Even when we have doubts, even when we are afraid, even when everything and everyone around us says that we are fools. We keep believing because that tiny mustard seed of faith inside of us will not let our hope die. And, because believing is better than not. Being a fool with hope in my heart is better, to me, than living a life without meaning.
And, so, we keep living in this in-between; not quite heaven, not quite this-is-all–there-is earth. In this middle ground, we have to walk by faith, we have to choose our perspective. We have to choose to see God in our everyday. We have to choose to find the sacred in the mundane. Easier said than done, but that is the hard work of hope.
What does this look like for you?
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
