Minding the Gap

                Bear with me as I try to process a thought. It had been a long weekend of too many activities, trying to attend to some of my aging parents’ needs with some resistance from the intended benefactors, trying to influence my older children to make wise choices, trying to be patient as my younger teens were finding it quite fun to be rude and snarky, at times. Notice I said trying?  Throughout all this, I was painfully aware that I was not being kind, or patient, or understanding, or really much of anything that was Christlike and gentle. I had things to do, places to go. Couldn’t people see that I was offering the benefit of my wisdom and intellect and they had better take advantage of it…and be grateful? 

                That Monday morning, I read Ezekiel 22:30. “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.”  That verse spoke to me, but I didn’t really understand why. It was jostling around in my mind thirty minutes later when I was on the treadmill at the gym. I turned on my ipod and listened as Ravi Zacharias started a four part series called “Mind the Gap.” (It is a short series on the gap between God’s character and our finite ability to understand that character.)

What struck me as I listened was this, twice in an hour long period, I had heard the same phrase: the gap, someone to stand in the gap and mind the gap. Typically, when I hear the same thing, I try to really listen. Psalm 62:11 says: One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard…” I wanted to hear what God was saying. In my experience, when God says something twice, He wants my attention.

Ravi quickly faded to the background and all I kept thinking of was how important it was to mind the gap. In Britain, “mind the gap” is the sign posted in the underground as a warning to people to “be careful, there’s a space big enough for one to fall through.”  I realized I was not minding the gap in my relationships. With my aging parents I was not being careful of the gaps they were facing as they grew older, frailer, needing more  help. With my teens I was not minding the gap as they faced big decisions, as they navigated relationships, as they tried to figure out right, wrong, good, bad, moral, immoral. With people around me I was not minding the gap they faced as they tried to understand who God is and why does it matter who He is, and if it matters, what should they do. 

There are gaps people face every day. Some of those gaps are cavernous. Some of the gaps are not that wide. For some people, God is on the other side of the gap. God says in Ezekiel that there is a gap between Him and those who dwell on the earth. He says that the land is cursed but if He will find one to stand in the gap, He will not destroy the land. 

I know that Jesus is ultimately the one who bridged that gap between us and God the Father. I am not the one who stands in the gap and removes the curse; that is Jesus alone. But, sometimes I think maybe God wants us to be a temporary bridge over which people can cross and get closer to the Lord, until they realize, it was Jesus all along.  I don’t know how it works exactly. 

Richard Wurmbrand tells the story of a fellow prisoner in the Nazi camps who was mean, rude and insulting to all the other prisoners.* No one liked him. One day this very ugly spirited man got very ill and in fact, was so ill, he could not even get into line to get his stale bread and watery soup. But Wurmbrand decided that he would share his bread and soup with the man. Every day he would lovingly and humbly give to the sickly and sick spirited man the very sustenance he himself needed so desperately.  The sick man received the bread and soup begrudgingly at first but realized without Wurmbrand’S help, he would die. One day, the sick prisoner had enough strength to ask Wurmbrand why he so self sacrificially gave to him when he was so unkind and ungracious. Wurmbrand said “because I love Jesus.“ The ill man asked, ”Who is he and what does he look like?” Wurmbrand: He is the Son of God and He looks like me. Ill man: If He looks like you, then I love Him because I love you. 

Wurmbrand minded the gap. He minded the gap between the ill spirited prisoner and God. In doing so, he allowed him to walk over him to find relationship with God through Jesus.  I want to be like that: one who will stand in the gap as others try to figure out who God is and how to reach Him. May God help me to mind the gap and be Jesus with skin on for people.  As Jesus instructed: In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (MT 5:16)  My beloved, mind the gap.

                 

*[I am very sorry that I cannot tell you the exact source. Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor who spent years in the Nazi camps,  wrote Tortured for Christ and founded Voice of the Martyrs.]