So much has already been said about Michael Jackson and his music in the past few weeks. But some of you mentioned that you were expecting to hear from us on this. So with the funeral coming up and in the spirit of I Will Tell, I thought we would focus on something he once said.
If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with. [Michael Jackson]
In the beginning, our passion is strong, our spirits hopeful and our vision limitless. In the end the vision becomes clear, the successes are ready to be celebrated and the apparent failures relegated to being mere distractions or, at best, signposts on the road to victory. But, oh the in-between.
The in-between is the place where passions start to fade, hope gets deferred, and the once-amazing vision becomes streamlined and trimmmed into something that is more, well, manageable. The in-between can be the place where dreams die.
But the in-between can also be a place where amazing insights and experiences are gained, where the battles we face, instead of defeating us, invigorate us to fight another day. It can be a place where we proclaim we have a living hope that can never be deferred, the place where the vision becomes clearer without becoming smaller, streamlined without losing its diversity and where some things die only so that they could bring forth more fruit.
Yes, the beginning and the end are exciting places to be, but for the in-between stages we have the living hope that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose , or as Michael would say, the in-between can be dealt with.
