Haggai 1:1-6:  “In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord, came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest:  Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.  Then the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying:  Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?  Now, therefore thus says the Lord of hosts:  Consider how you have fared.  You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.”

Haggai 2:5-2:9:  “Speak now to Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?  How does it look to you now?  Is it not in your sight as nothing?  Yet, now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.  My spirit abides among you; do not fear.  For thus says the Lord of hosts:  Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts.  The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.  The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts.”

   “Are we there yet?”  “Are we EVER gonna get there?”  Now look, to a generation of parents who’re blessed with cellular technology for streaming videos, these questions might not come from the mouths of their children as quickly, but my guess is the questions still come. 

  “Are we there yet?”  “Are we EVER gonna get there?”  I’ll never forget taking the long trek between Springfield Ohio and Lenoir, NC in the backseat of my parent’s blue Plymouth Duster.  You see, every year, a few days before Christmas, my parents would bundle up my sister and I so we could visit relatives in North Carolina when I was younger.  We’d leave, early in the morning, about 4am.  Just about the time we got halfway to NC, my sister and I’d start annoying one another out of abject boredom.  On top of that, we’d ask Mom and Dad questions with what I’m sure was a nauseating repetition – “are we there yet?” or “are we ever gonna get there?”  On and on that’d go until we were near enough to my grandmother’s house to move from misery into excitement again.

  There’s just something about middle times which are just frustrating.  Now what I mean when I say “middle times” is simply this.  Middle times are those occasions when you can remember the glories of the past and you’re heading into an unknown future but the fullness of that future has yet to reveal itself. 

  I can give you an example from my own life, I think I’ve shared this before so if I’m being repetitious, I apologize.  When I felt called to be a pastor, I left a job teaching culinary school in order to go back to college and get my degree.  As an instructor, my students treated me with respect and a fair degree of reverence.  As a returning college student though, trudging through general ed requirements with my 18-year-old peers, things were different.  On top of that, by the second semester, the bloom was off the rose.  The early excitement was fading into the dreary reality that the whole endeavor was gonna take a number of years.  Until I met Natalie, things were pretty depressing.  There, stuck in the middle between what I once was and what I was hoping to become, I was pretty miserable. 

  And I think we all get to those kinds of stages at points in our lives.  We all find ourselves throughout life’s journeys somewhere between the good past and the unknown future.  I call it the misery of the middle.  Maybe it comes as we switch careers or find ourselves looking for work.  Perhaps we encounter the misery of the middle as we endure treatments for illnesses.  We remember what it was like to be well and look forward to being healthy yet again but, in the meantime, things are bleak.  It’s there at some point in all our lives.  It’s as inevitable as hitting West Virginia on a trip from Springfield, Ohio to Lenoir, NC.  It’s sure to come into all our lives because no matter how hard we try, we just can’t live in either the past or the future.  All we have is the moment at hand and sometimes the moment at hand isn’t quite what we’d like it to be!

  The misery of the middle is so universal that psychologists came up with a highfalutin’ name for it.  They call it a “liminal state.”  It even has a definition on Wikipedia.  Here’s what they have – (From the Latin word limen, meaning “a threshold”)  “A liminal state is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the “threshold” between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner.”  I just love Wikipedia.  It may not always be accurate but it sure SOUNDS right, doesn’t it? 

  Now look, you could go out and read Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner and I think what you’d find is nothing more than this– “there’s misery in the middle.”  There’s a certain dis-ease that comes in between the past and the future.  And believe me, when you’re there, when you’re in the misery of the middle, it’s easy to diagnose….  Life takes on as grey a cast as the skies outside have been recently and you start asking the question “are we there yet?” with a tangible dread instead of a hopeful optimism.  

  You begin wondering aloud to your spouse or your friends if you’ll ever get to a point where things will be different and, by different, you mean BETTER.  Which, when you really think about it, is just a way of asking the question “are we EVER gonna get there?”  And when you’re really stuck in the misery of the middle, you wonder – where in the world is God in all of this?!?!