Middle Children

I always have great conversations with my college friend, Curt. One weekend, as we were taking a small road trip, he said this, "I feel like I was born in the middle. Like everything got started without me ever having time to get ready." For instance: he never chose to be an American or in the 21st century; have blue eyes or be the baby of the family; to be artistic or left-handed. For him, it's like he has been dropped into a play and handed lines, but never got to choose the role and let alone have any idea what is going on in the story. Against his analytical and engineering inclination, he was never allowed to figure anything out in time to be fully ready for life

Curt's situation is our situation and in the middle of doing our best to learn, to know, to make the wisest decisions we can, life hurtles at us - past us - completely unconcerned with our readiness. Here it is - caught in the middle, as it were - that we find ourselves at almost every parcel of life. We can't figure everything out and we cannot safeguard every decision from failure... or pain.

And I must think that this is how some of the disciples felt the day after Jesus died on the cross, when He was dead and buried along with all of their hopes and dreams and faith.

"He was supposed to lead Israel."
"He should have called down fire from the sky or angels from the heavens."
"He was just getting going; getting a following; becoming important and powerful! If only this hadn't happened. He was just in the middle of becoming king!"

These may have been some of these discouraged thoughts swirling down through a disciple as the last drop of hope left him and his plans dried up in the drain. And if the plans of those disciples had been the ultimate ones, our hopes would have gone down the tubes with his.

Life comes at us and interrupts us, right in the middle of those very things we are getting towards finishing; those things which mattered most. And it is here, immediately in this complaint, that we must notice a contradiction - we cannot have it both ways: either we can bemoan that, much against good manners, Life comes and disturbs our interests and projects OR we've come in the middle of something else, someone's project, and interrupted the interest of another. The contradiction is not that both are interruptions, but that there cannot be both a Master story (into which we're dropped) AND that our own personal story is the Master. One must override the other.

The huge consequence of my own story not be the Master story of my life is this: if I'm in the middle of someone else's story, and that Someone Else dropped me here and is working on plot and character development, then this changes the weight of everything. If my plans and efforts start to fail, for instance, this is a plot twist, not a tragedy. If loss or glory comes my way, this isn't ultimate defeat or triumph, but Him making the story more interesting

The questions all of us humans must face are:
1. I know I'm a character, but is there an author?
2. If there is, can I trust Him?
3. If I can trust Him, how does that affect the way I see what happens to me?

Curt is right, this does feel very much like we've been dropped in the middle of something else which was going on, so what does that mean for us? Well, what say you? Answer these questions (in your journal, perhaps) and think about how this changes things or leaves them the same.