The “In Between Time”
Letters to a State | Volume 3, No. 4
After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. _Matthew 25:16-19
“When I get you home…”
When I was a boy those words were ominous words. And ironically, I heard them most often at church.
Church was unlike any other place I went to. There was a certain level of propriety and decorum expected for little boys when attending church and I was a frequent underachiever. When this would happen, my mom would whisper sternly to me, “when I get you home you’re going to get a spanking.”
Mom’s word was inviolable. There was no question of whether or not there would be a spanking, even though I usually embraced the wild fantasy that mom would forget. To help make this fantasy come true I would try lull mom into forgetfulness by trying to be invisible and not draw any more attention to myself for the rest of the service and on the way home.
And mom was good at giving a head fake. On the drive home my misconduct was seldom mentioned and then upon arrival there was Sunday lunch to prepare, a meal to eat, a kitchen to clean up but…
“After a long time” I’d hear mom say, “David, about your conduct at church today…” and then there would be a settling of accounts.
There is that same ominous undertone in all of life.
Every culture has a sense of “the judgement” interwoven into its social DNA. Like the spooked guy whistling in the dark as he walks by a graveyard on a lonely road, we try to pretend that that day doesn’t exist or if it does it will not be that bad. We try to convince ourselves that God is not looking or if He is, He’ll forget. But the apostle Paul got it right when writing to the 1st century church in Corinth when he penned: “Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” (2 Corinthians 5:11)
And that ILCOG is what we are to do.
In this busy world full of distractions and options, we still have an important function. More and more we are like John the Baptist—a voice crying in the wilderness. But cry we must.
We must faithfully remind people that even though there may be a long space between their actions and the consequences, they must not be lulled into a false fantasy of believing that their actions do not really matter.
My mother got it. As the created, there is a certain level of propriety and obedience that is required of us by our Creator. Our actions matter, our deeds are determinative and they direct the outcome of our lives and set an eternal trajectory.
When Jesus was questioned about heaven he said it is like a man who went on a long journey who left his goods with his servants and one day – after a long while – he came back and there was an accounting of how his servants handled themselves while he was away.
Jesus taught a lot in that parable. But for sure, one of the most important things He taught was that in that in-between-time, the time between when He went away and the time went He returns, that is our time and He was reminding us that we would be required to give an account of how we handled that in between time.
Keeping that message central is vital for each congregation and specifically for each Church of God member and minister; it is perhaps our most important task in this ever-increasing dark moral landscape that we live and minister in.
We must remind them (and ourselves!) that the next knock on their door may be the eternal knock when the heavenly bailiff comes to escort them to their final accounting. And we must remind them that this in-between-time is when they must give a good account of themselves.
No whistling in the dark, pretending it’s not true, ILCOG, it’s time to shout the message from the rooftop.
David L. Kemp
