THE IN-BETWEENS [F, 5-13-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

Ida Belle Paterson was the youngest of thirteen children, on a farm in Iowa. Her mother lived over 100 years. Ida Belle, being the last child, never knew her mother as a young woman. But she learned from the way her mother did her work, even at 100, still living on the farm, by herself.

One day Ida Belle watched her mother bake an apple pie. She peeled the apples. After that she sat and thought for a while. Then she rolled out the crust. After that she sat and looked out the window. Then she combined the apples with the other stuff that makes a pie. After that she chatted with Ida Belle. Then she put the pie into the oven…

I find that in my old age I need in-between times, those opportunities to rest and reflect between events. In my younger days I would have five or six events in a row. There were no in-betweens.

I remember how in my campus ministry days at IL State U, I hated to leave town, for as students came, needing to talk over their problems with someone, Anne Paxton, my friend and secretary, would feel so bad for them that she would schedule them for an hour on the day I got back into the office. I’d have seven or eight intense one-hour counseling sessions [sex, pregnancy, gender identity, money, parents, sex, bad roommates, flunking out, sex, wrong major] in a row, One event followed another in quick order. I needed in-betweens, but there was no time for them.

It's always tempting to say that what fits us best now is the way things ought always to be, and I want to avoid that. Still, I like this time of life, these “golden” years, when there is opportunity for the in-betweens.

Often in former days, when I did have a chance for an in-between, I would reflect by asking where God was present in the event[s] just past, or how God was directing me on those occasions. Now I think that’s probably too narrowing. I simply try to stay open to what I just did or thought or heard, in general, not asking any questions or looking for anything in particular…just being open.

John Robert McFarland

I’m preaching a week from Sunday, on March 22, at 10:30 Eastern Daylight time. You can get the service via livestream at smumc.church, either when it’s live or later via the archive. Just go to the site and click on the Livestream button. [Not smumc.org; that’s a different St. Mark’s.