One of my favorites themes is, “inbetween time.”  It’s supposed to be two words but it is always one event and it’s choked full of meaning.

Most of our lives is lived “inbetween.”  In between the yesterday event and the upcoming happening.  If you wish someone “Merry Christmas” the day after Thanksgiving, well, it just sounds awkward.  You are unable to say “Happy New Year” right after Christmas because people will think that you’re ahead of yourself.  (But if you don’t plan on seeing them again prior to January 1, then it is permitted.)  Or begin a new tradition saying, “Merry New Year?”  Nah, it’ll never catch on.  We’re stuck in the “inbetween.”

Some people hate the “inbetweens” of life.  Divorced and remarried within a year.  God forbid an inbetween-time-breather to weigh your life back into balance.  Going from one party to the next and you’ll end up in rehab.  Doing nothing can create an encroaching boredom.  Without something ahead there would be no inbetween time.

The Church says that our whole life is one big “inbetween” time.  We were with God before birth and return to His care after our death.  Suddenly our patience kicks in and we don’t seem to mind waiting for life’s parting so much.

And, how can you actually be “inbetween” time?  Am I able to crawl between the first minute and the second and live “inbetween” the two of them?

We can kill it, schedule it, race toward it, measure it, remember it, point toward it, generalize about it,  count it, pass it, be on it, repeat it, share, stretch and season it; stage, patch and trim it.  We’ve had the best of them, the golden of them and the prime, peak and length of them.  And, we can be and enjoy the “inbetween” times of them as well.  “Happy New Year,” I mean “Merry Christmas.”