I have been intrigued by the concept of BLANKS lately. ( ______ ) The space of inbetween(ess), of not being-here-nor-there, of something indescribable and of a place that has no voice of its own. Muted. It was funny then (for lack of a better word), to read about Marc Roeda’s idea of waiting _ in the blank (spaces) , and I wished I could have done as good a job as he had in properly defining this space for myself.
And so there’s this idea of blank space as a grey area of uncertainty and waiting. Roeda talks about the horizontal strip of blank, white page after verses, the space that punctuates and turns the psalmist’ lamentations into rejoicing. I wonder what took place in between as something must have happened to the psalmist while he/she was residing in this space to have turned his/her waiting into wonderment.
Even as these laments ask ??How long??? over and over, they seem dead set against giving specifics. They give us only blank spaces. At the same time, this psalm is showing us how to live inside those blank spaces – wide, narrow or in-between. What do we do? We wait. We wait on God. Whether we wait patiently depends on what we mean by ??patient.?? We are patient in the sense that we refuse to give up on God and settle for second-rate alternatives.
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Bold faith insists on presenting reality as it is experienced. It refuses to give a polite, edited-for-TV version. Prayers that arise from a contrived faith settle for a contrived god, a god who can??t handle the truth. Laments refuse to settle. They seek God and nothing less.
Life is damn exciting. Scaryexciting, breathlesslyexciting. While blank white spaces often need bold faith, I can only hope that I have morethanenough to go on. I cannot find a definition or proper way of explaining what this space entails, the space that is often tucked in corners, dog-earred, separating life episodes, putting things on hold. But I’m willing to wear my scubadiving mask (and bring a harpoon for greater measure) to check out what’s in store at the deeper end.
[P/s. God. I couldn't resist the scubadiving analogy. I wanna go to Redang!!!]
D.
