Living in Liminal Space

my homemade Advent wreath

This summer, I was introduced to the phrase “liminal space.” It refers to the in-between transition place, when you have started to leave the old but are not yet fully in the new. Your feet straddle the threshold (limen in Latin) with your heart in one room and your gaze in the other. Liminal space describes my world well, a boarding school for TCK’s, whose heart homes are across international borders and passport countries even farther away. We have learned to inhabit the tension of feeling ourselves a part of multiple worlds.

Jesus likely knew something about that, too. The Son of God and simultaneous Son of Man, creator of the universe without a place to lay his head, spent his life here living in liminal space. He, who was fully God, became fully human by spending nine months in the womb of a Jewish girl. He grew up obeying the laws of Moses and yet had come precisely to introduce a new covenant, a better one. At the culmination of his ministry, he hung suspended between heaven and earth, life and death, justice and grace. His choice to live in the in-between saved us.

2020 has felt akin to a liminal space. Somewhere between multiple quarantines, facemasks, and remote everything, it is good to remember this is temporary living. Because Jesus left heaven to wear human skin and eventually die for us, our true home has shifted to being with him. May this Advent season invite you to become comfortable living in the juxtaposition of already/not yet, whatever your liminal space looks like.

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).

*First written for WorldVenture's 2020 Christmas Advent readings.