Life Between the Ellipses

My facebook status today read that I was "reminded closed doors are an answer to prayer, though it can still hurt a little when they close on you."

A friend's response was: "..."

I replied, that "so much of life is lived between the ellipses (I think that might be the title of my next book)."

Side note: I am hereby claiming "Life Between the Ellipses" as a title for a book I will write (possibly co-author with my friend Tonya Toutge as she laid claim to writing it with me, and she was the author of "...").

An ellipsis (...) is used in writing to show an omission (usually in shortening a quotation) or to indicate a pause, hesitation or break. I probably overuse them--and probably inappropriately as well.

We sometimes have omissions in our sentences of life (don't worry, I'm not going to overdo that whole "life is a book" metaphor). I think more often we have those pauses, hesitations and breaks. Perseverance is a virtue. Waiting is a part of life. It often sucks. Sometimes the ellipses of life make up most of our life.

Life is also made up of living between the paradoxes (a seminary professor of mine already wrote a book about those paradoxes entitled Between Two Truths). One of those paradoxes is that we're called to be active--not passive--and we're also called to wait on God. We must discern when to act and when to wait patiently for God. Sometimes, living in the midst of paradox is where we encounter God, and sometimes we just have to wait...