An In-Between Time Reflection for November 13
There is a particular spiritual discipline required in November.
It is called waiting.
November itself seems rather fond of it. The leaves have mostly finished their spectacular performance and are now lying about the lawn like actors who refuse to leave the stage. Christmas is beginning to appear in shop windows, but Advent has not yet arrived. The Church year is winding toward its great declaration on Christ the King Sunday, but we are not there yet.
We are somewhere in the middle.
Again.
Apparently, God is quite fond of the middle.
This can be mildly inconvenient for those of us who prefer our spiritual lives to proceed according to a sensible timetable.
I have often thought that if God had consulted a parish priest before designing the spiritual life, there would have been a few improvements. There would be clear agendas, measurable outcomes, coffee available at all significant moments, and absolutely no wilderness lasting forty years.
Forty years seems excessive.
Forty minutes would have made the point.
Yet Scripture is filled with people waiting.
Abraham waits for a promise.
Israel waits for freedom.
The prophets wait for justice.
Exiles wait for home.
Mary waits for a child.
The disciples wait beside a tomb.
The Church waits for the kingdom.
And here we are.
Waiting still.
Perhaps waiting is not an unfortunate interruption in the life of faith.
Perhaps waiting is part of the life of faith.
That is difficult for us because we have become remarkably skilled at eliminating waiting. We can order supper without leaving the sofa, send messages across the world in seconds, and become genuinely irritated when a webpage requires four seconds to load.
Four seconds.
Civilization hangs by a thread.
And then we encounter God, who seems entirely unimpressed by our urgency.
We pray.
We hope.
We work.
We wonder.
And sometimes nothing appears to happen.
The relationship remains unresolved.
The grief remains heavy.
The answer does not come.
The church does not change as quickly as we hoped.
The world continues producing more suffering than seems remotely necessary.
We begin wondering whether God has misplaced our file.
But the biblical witness suggests something rather different.
God’s silence is not necessarily God’s absence.
And God’s slowness is not necessarily God’s inactivity.
Much of God’s deepest work happens underground.
Seeds know this.
Before anything green appears above the soil, something remarkable is happening beneath it. Roots are forming. Life is gathering itself. The future is quietly preparing to become visible.
But from above?
It looks remarkably like dirt.
Faith often feels like that.
We look at our lives and see very little evidence that anything is changing. We look at the Church and wonder whether resurrection has somehow been delayed by committee. We look at the world and ask whether justice has missed its connecting flight.
And still God says:
Wait.
Not because nothing is happening.
But because everything does not happen at once.
There is a holy difference between waiting and doing nothing.
Christian waiting is not passive.
The prophets waited for justice while speaking justice.
Mary waited for Jesus while carrying Jesus.
The disciples waited for the Spirit while gathering together in prayer.
The Church waits for the kingdom while trying—sometimes magnificently, sometimes rather awkwardly—to live as though the kingdom were already breaking into the world.
That is our calling in this in-between time.
We do not simply sit around waiting for Christ to reign.
We practise the reign of Christ.
We forgive.
We feed.
We welcome.
We reconcile.
We tell the truth.
We defend the vulnerable.
We make peace where peace seems improbable.
We love people whom the world has decided are inconvenient.
In other words, we begin living today according to the future God has promised.
That is Christian hope.
Hope is not optimism.
Optimism looks at the evidence and says, “Everything will probably work out.”
Christian hope looks at the evidence—sometimes very grim evidence indeed—and says, “God is not finished.”
There is a considerable difference.
Optimism depends upon circumstances.
Hope depends upon God.
And perhaps that is why this strange little stretch of November matters.
We have walked through the great company of the saints. Soon we will stand before Christ the King and proclaim that all the kingdoms, powers, ambitions, empires, markets, governments, institutions, and assorted human attempts at grandeur are ultimately temporary.
Christ reigns.
Love wins.
Mercy endures.
Death does not have the last word.
But today?
Today we are still waiting.
And maybe that is precisely where faith becomes real.
Because faith is easy when the answer has arrived.
Faith becomes something deeper when we can stand in the unfinished places of life and still say:
God is here.
God is working.
God is faithful.
The saints understood this.
Most of them did not see the completion of what they began. They planted trees beneath whose branches they would never sit. They prayed prayers whose answers came generations later. They struggled for justice they would not live to see.
Yet they kept going.
Perhaps holiness is sometimes nothing more dramatic than refusing to give up on God’s future.
So if you find yourself waiting today—for healing, for reconciliation, for clarity, for courage, for change—do not assume the waiting is empty.
Something may already be growing beneath the surface.
Grace has always done some of its finest work underground.
And when nothing seems to be happening, God may simply be doing what God has done throughout Scripture:
preparing resurrection where we can only see dirt.
So wait.
But while you wait, love somebody.
Feed somebody.
Forgive somebody.
Encourage somebody.
Plant something.
Pray something.
Do one small thing that belongs to the kingdom of God.
Because one day the waiting will end.
Christ will be all in all.
And until then, we have work to do.
Preferably after coffee.
God is not late. Grace is simply growing where we cannot yet see it.
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Companion Prayer
Faithful God,
meet us in the waiting.
Give us patience when answers are slow,
hope when the way is unclear,
and courage to keep loving while we wait.
Help us trust that your grace is growing
even where we cannot yet see it.
Amen.