Recently, someone said to me, “I’m ready to move on. I don’t like being in this in between place.” 

I know what he means and I’ll bet you do too. I sometimes think about it as life in the gap. It’s the gap between what was or is and what will be. 

It’s the gap that comes about from significant loss or change but it’s also the gap that makes space for something new and unexpected to come. Advent is a gap season and it holds before us the realities of living in the gap. 

Life in the gap isn’t predictable or controllable. The gap is usually a place of uncertainty and not knowing, fear and vulnerability, confusion and chaos, anticipation and expectancy, waiting and watching. You probably know what that’s like.

In today’s Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 33:14-16) Jeremiah is speaking to a community living in the gap. The Babylonian army has devastated Jerusalem. Some of the Jews have been deported from their homeland and are living in exile. Others are occupied citizens in their own land. And Jeremiah is in prison. 

In today’s gospel (Luke 21:25-36) the disciples are looking into the gap of impermanence, the gap that reminds us nothing lasts forever. Jesus has told them that the great buildings of their lives will fall and not one stone will be left upon another. “When?” they ask. “How will we know? What are the signs?” Look around Jesus says, the signs of change are all around you.

Haven’t there been times when you were living in the gap? Maybe that’s where you are today.

What’s your experience of the gap? How did you get there? What does it bring up in you? What are your fears? What are your hopes and prayers?

The gap can be a hard, challenging, and uncomfortable place. How do we navigate the betwixt and between times of life? How do we live in the gap?

Rabbi David Wolpe says this: 

“Escape is not a response, neither is mourning for some illusory, imagined perfect age gone by. We have to recognize what can be changed, and not pine for worlds that once were, for to live in memory alone destroys our chance for the only sane attitude in life, which is to live in hope.” (Wolpe, The Healer of Shattered Hearts, 138)

Hope is our only way forward and “the only sane attitude in life,” and it’s what Jeremiah offers in today’s Old Testament reading.

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.”

Those are Jeremiah’s words of hope to everyone living in the gap. God’s promise will be fulfilled as surely as trees sprout leaves when summer draws near. 

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord.” The implication is that better days, new days, more days are coming. And isn’t that what you want in the gap season? Isn’t that your hope?

To live in hope, however, is more than passively waiting for God to show up and do something. That is not hope. That is just wishful thinking or wishful praying. 

To live in hope means remaining open to the future and refusing to let the present moment close us in. It’s the belief that the future is always better, not because it necessarily will be, but because it might be. (Caputo, In Search of Radical Theology, 190) 

The future holds a potential or possibility for something more or better than the actual reality of the present moment. That’s our hope when we are living in the gap. That’s our hope throughout the Season of Advent.

Life in the gap often feels contained. We hunker down, shelter in place, and ride it out. When life is contained we’re disconnected from the world, others, ourselves, even God. We contain rather than relate. 

Hope comes to us as a call. Hope calls us from a life of containment to a life of relationship. It asks us for a response. 

Maybe that’s why, in today’s gospel (Luke 21:25-36), Jesus says,

“Stand up and raise your heads.” 

Maybe that’s the response to hope’s call. When there are signs in the sun, moon, and stars; when there is distress among nations; when people are fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming; when the powers of heaven are shaken; when it looks like things are getting worse “stand up and raise your heads.” 

When you want to escape and run away “stand up and raise your heads.” When you want to duck and hide “stand up and raise your heads.” When you are tired and overwhelmed “stand up and raise your heads.” When everything seems hopeless “stand up and raise your heads”

What does it mean and look like for you today to stand up and raise your head? What keeps you from standing up and raising your head?

I wonder what we might see if we stood up and raised our heads. We just might see the days that are surely coming.

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Image Credit: Photo by Curtis Potvin on Unsplash.