In-Between-Time, God-Moment Time

The thrill of watching a football match is the anxious wait to see who kicks goals. From the start of the game till the finish it is a waiting till there are winners and losers.  Anyone who enjoys sports would admit that the time between the start of the game and the finish is the best part. Today, the Church invites you to buy a ticket to an “in-between-time”.

For a Christian, the life game started at the Christening.  It is a moment of God coming into your life. Then the thrill of Christian living starts. The winners and losers of this game will be decided at the end. The goal of the ‘life-game’ is to let God break into our human life. Unlike those who buy tickets for the football matches, in the life game, we are both spectators and players. In the life game the ball is always in our court. Selfishness, lures of the secular world, ambition for success, jealousy and such other obstacles are to be overcome in the Christian game of life. And even in the toughest and the darkest times of our life, we do not want to take our eyes off the ball. Our goal post is in front of us and we want to steadily progress towards it. Setbacks like financial difficulties, let down by friends, failures and ill health are not going to stop us from letting God break into our lives, because our goal is to let God break into our human lives. Having more incidents of God breaking in make our Christian life a greater thrill. There is no victory until the end of the game of life. We are in “in-between-time” – between the baptismal birth and the final call to God’s house.

Today we start the season of advent and it reminds us that we are in the “in-between-time”. After four weeks of meditation on God’s coming into our lives, on Christmas Day we shall celebrate the greatness of God becoming man.

The Gospel today mentions people working in fields, women working together at grinding stones, and the day-to-day life before the big flood in Noah’s time. Similarly, we too live normal lives. From the outset nobody can say who are the final winners and losers in life. It is a matter between you and God. It depends on how much you have allowed God to enter into your life. Let this Advent time, the “in-between-time”, be a time of counting God moments in our lives.