“They began to offer burnt sacrifices to the Lord, though the foundation of the Lord’s temple had not yet been laid.”
Ezra 3:6
This devotional was originally posted to my personal blog almost exactly six years ago. Interesting, how I find myself in a similar place in some ways again. Just today I stumbled on a sentence in my devotions that spoke of David being anointed king years before he actually stepped into that role. In the intervening years, he lived with both the confidence and the uncertainty of his anointing, waiting for God to bring it to pass. It resonated deeply with this season in my writing journey. In many ways, writing has been my anointing, the thing I never doubted God would do, and yet I live in the space between those paragraphs, the place of both confidence and uncertainty.
This current season has felt like living in the space between two paragraphs.
My nursing career as I knew it is over, and I find myself in a new undefined place. My children are all in school and just entering the preteen madness. My graduate degree is in progress, and I’m exactly in the middle of the program. My health, always an ongoing struggle, remains an unsolved (and just now, far more pressing) mystery.
I’ve written a lot about seasons of waiting. Seasons of limbo. They are always hard in their own unique ways. The patience and perseverance required in these seasons feels like running a marathon. And then there’s the unknown…
I like to frame my life through the lens of other stories. It gives me perspective and a reference point for the things I’m going through. There’s no shortage of stories about struggles and hard times. I often read them from start to finish, gleaning the wisdom I can gain from them and feeling reassured when “everything turns out” by their conclusion.
What I often forget is that in reading these stories, I have the benefit of hindsight. I know, when the characters are in the middle of their struggles, what the outcome will be. It’s unfair. And unlike my life.
Because the reality is, I don’t know the outcome of any of my struggles. I don’t know what form my career may take in the future. I don’t know how my children will weather middle school and high school and the rest of their lives. I don’t know if I’ll successfully complete my studies–and if so, how they’ll apply to my life afterward. And I truly don’t know how the next several chapters will unfold with my health.
It’s the unknown that makes the journey most difficult and painful. We can face any adversary we know: prepare ourselves, shore up our areas of weakness. But the unknown…
The stories I read lose some of their power when I forget this element. It’s tempting to imagine that it was somehow easier for the heroes to survive what they went through because it all worked out in the end.
Yesterday I began re-reading the book of Ezra. The Israelites, having just emerged from seventy years of captivity, the unbearable space between their national paragraphs, returned to their homeland. They set to work immediately rebuilding the altar. On it they offered the sacrifices that were due in that season. And then they went on to offer every other kind of sacrifice the people brought: regular burnt offerings, New Moon offerings, sacrifices for all the appointed feasts, and freewill offerings. I can just picture the new altar, ablaze for days with sacrifices brought by the people.
It’s easy to imagine that everything was right. That everything must have felt settled to the Israelites. They were home at last, they were offering sacrifices in their own land. All was good, surely. No wonder they felt like celebrating.
But then I read the last line of the chapter: “They began to offer burnt sacrifices to the Lord, though the foundation of the Lord’s temple had not yet been laid.” (Ezra 3:6)
If you’re at all familiar with the story of the return from exile, you know just how much lay ahead of the Israelites. It would be many, many more years before the temple would be completed. The nation lay in ruins, literally in heaps of rubble. They would face opposition from all sides. Their very lives would be endangered. There was a distinct possibility this dream of rebuilding the nation would never come to fruition.
Interesting that they led with sacrifice and praise, even in that space between the paragraphs.
My brother wisely advised me this week to sit with the space. He cautioned me against trying to neatly resolve every uncomfortable, painful, terrifying blank moment.
It’s hard, isn’t it? We want neatly resolved stories. We want answers that make sense of the hardship. And they may come, eventually. But it’s in the waiting, in the lingering and letting the blank space do its work, that we emerge on the other side as different people. It roughs up our glossy edges. It inflicts purposeful discomfort and instills deep character. It trains us to recognize pain in others. It drives us to the end of ourselves. It teaches us to celebrate the small victories, like altars in heaps of rubble.
I’m resolving (or trying to) to let the blank space do its work. Its uncomfortable, uncertain, sometimes unwanted work.
I told my husband today that I felt very much like I was in the space between the paragraphs of my life. He nodded and seemed to think it over for a minute. Then he said, “I think I am too. Only I’m at the indent in the next paragraph.”
Wherever you may find yourself today–whether in the space just after the end of the last chapter, the no-man’s land between the paragraphs, or the indent on the cusp of something new–be still. Sit with it. Let it do its work. The story isn’t finished, but don’t rush the ending.
Linger here and build your altar in the rubble. Praise God in the unfinished. He will be faithful in all that comes after–but He will also be faithful in the in-between.
