Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2005 Summer Issue -- Living Between the Times

"We’ll have our own little farm, with a rabbit hutch. We’ll raise our own alfalfa and you can feed the rabbits. And it will be our place, so no one can tell us what to do."

"When, George, when are we going to have this place?"

"Soon, Lennie, soon."

You can feel the despair of George and Lennie in John Steinbeck’s book, Of Mice and Men. But the despair won’t last for long. No sir, "We’ll have our own little farm." When? "Someday."

We all look forward to "someday." The day of the new car. The graduation. The promotion. The raise. The wedding. The first child. The second child. The savings account! Life would be pretty bland without the next someday, wouldn’t it?

For George and Lennie, life was a barren existence during the era after the Great Depression--traveling from one thankless job to another; never able to save money; never having a place of their own. But life would be better. Until then, they had to live between the times; the times of their virtual enslavement to poverty and wandering, and the time when they would have a place of their own.

I think I know how George and Lennie feel. No, my material existence is not nearly so destitute as theirs. I have a good job. I have a nice home. My wife, my kids and I have plenty of clothing for any season. The savings account and retirement fund are not what I’d like them to be, but at least they exist! So I can’t weep about the material destitution, the hunger, the want that George and Lennie experienced. But I still sense that things in this current existence are not right. They are not what they should be. I sense that I live between the times, between the times of how thing are and the time when God will set things right, the way they should be.

I see children being raised without nurture. I see husbands and wives who do not love each other. I see the selfish pursuit of pleasure ruin lives. I see gossip, resentment, manipulation and control ruin friendships and families. I see countries without food to feed their people. I see war ravage cities and countrysides. I see people cry out for something better. I see people yearn for a better day. I see people who are confused, hurt, and lost living between the times.

I’d like for everything to be wonderful right now. A nice home for every family with plenty of food in the cupboards. Husbands and wives who forgive and children who say, "Thank you." Neighbors you can trust. Enemies who bury the hatchet. And I believe that will happen one day. But right now we live between the times. We live in the time when people are deciding if they are content with the way things are, or if they can and will catch God’s vision of the future.

As the church, we have been rescued from this present evil age (Gal. 1:4), but we still live in it. We can’t escape it. But, we can resist it and look beyond it. And we wait patiently. We live with that "tension between ‘church’ and ‘world,’ ... (because) ... the church has a cross to carry, too." (Lee Camp, Mere Discipleship, p.70).

I think that cross is, in part, our patient abiding with disappointments over the way things sometimes are. It is the faithful proclamation of Jesus and the kingdom he will inaugurate when he returns, and the steadfast endurance of our faith and discipleship in the face of this evil age.

If you have read Of Mice and Men, you know it has a disappointing ending. If you have read the Bible, you know our ending won’t be disappointing. "For our momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2 Corinthians 4:17.

: For a related Campus CrossWalk article, see This is Life, So Live It!

Warren Baldwin preaches in Ulysses, KS. He and his wife, Cheryl, have 3 children; Wes, a sophomore at Freed-Hardeman University; Jenny, a junior in high school; and Kristin, a seventh grader. The Baldwins enjoy sports and traveling together.