Liminal spaces: What Docklands Stadium, Smaug's Lair and Empty Parking Lots Have in Common With God's Redemptive Plans for your Life.

What does Docklands Stadium, Smaug's Lair, and empty parking lots have in common with God's redemptive plans for your life?

I used to manage a bar on the top level at Docklands Stadium in Melbourne, back when it was called Telstra Dome. My job was basically to grease the cogs of the punter-machine — to keep them slurping and spending and squawking for as long as legally possible. There were long periods of preparation (during game play) followed by short bursts of intensity in the breaks. Besides the odd lone-wolf smart enough to grab a beverage while it was quiet, we would spend most of the match-time cleaning, topping up fridges, kegs and tills, and trying to look busy. Then the siren would go and you would hear the rattling and clacking of thousands of spring-loaded chairs as the mob unanimously rose, thumping and clattering their way down the grandstand to bottle-neck briefly at the entrance, blocking out the daylight momentarily before bursting into the open walkway like an avalanche. In those few moments we would revive pre-poured beers (a quick tap on the head makes them froth up like new), spread out along the bar, and brace ourselves for the onslaught. Then as quickly as it begun, it was over. After 3/4 time we would barricade the bar with roller shutters and begin licking our wounds and dealing with the aftermath. Shortly into the 4th quarter the doors would periodically thunder and shake as less-than-satisfied punters sought to express their infantile disapproval on the way out. Once it was safe we would open the doors to look down on a vast empty arena, the roof now open to the crimson-evening sky. The roar of the crowd replaced by an eerie silence; the lego-sized footy players by the odd pigeon or pie-wrapper fluttering in the breeze. The white sheen of the flood lights by the last flickering rays of sunlight. In front of our bar— a tightly-packed throng replaced by a trash-filled walkway and an unsettling quiet. 

The scene above describes a liminal space. A space in transition, a space in recovery, a space in-between. There's a restless energy about it, a sense of waiting, a sense of anticipation, a sense of gearing-up (or down). Writers use the concept frequently in movies to heighten tension: an empty carpark at night, a subway at 4am, a city after an apocalypse, a school corridor in the summer holidays, an abandoned industrial warehouse. Restless spaces. Ambiguous spaces. Tense spaces. They make great movie sets for a clash between a villain and victor, think of Batman and the Joker thrashing it out in a skyscraper under construction; Smaug and Bilbo in the dwarves’ abandoned treasure trove, Voldemort's last stand against Harry Potter in the ruins of Hogwarts Castle. Once you're aware of what liminal spaces are you'll see them everywhere. 

But liminality doesn't just apply to spaces, it also applies to time. Those times in your life when you're in-between stuff: careers, relationships, recovering from a sickness or a setback, moving house, and many others. These can be uncomfortable seasons, laden with confusion, pregnant with anticipation, ambiguous and disorientating. But they're also super important. They are times of healing, transformation, of binding up and tearing down, of resetting, of letting go. We might be uncomfortable with these seasons but God isn't. In fact, he specialises in it. He uses these seasons to help us empty our hands of the past so that we can embrace the future he has for us. 

The great men and women of the Bible went through liminal seasons, usually followed by great leaps forward in God's redemptive plan. Adam and Eve after they left the Garden of Eden and setting humankind on a huge journey toward salvation; Noah's season of waiting in the ark before resettling humankind on earth; Joseph in the Egyptian prison before embracing control of the huge empire which would forge the Israelite's into God's people; Moses in the Midian desert for 40 years before leading the great exodus of the Israelites from slavery; Joshua dwelling with them in the desert before entering the promised land; King David as a shepherd in the time between being anointed and appointed; The Prophet Elijah in hiding for years before finally facing King Ahab and his Baal-bleating bullies, Ruth giving up her identity as a Moabite to move to Judah where she knew nobody, but would meet her future husband Boaz with whom she would begin the line of Jesus; the Israelites as a nation in exile in Babylon, before returning to their land. 

There are many more example, in fact, the whole Biblical meta-narrative places us Christians in one big liminal season—the epoch between Jesus' first and second coming, where the Kingdom of Heaven is both here and not yet; inaugurated but not consummated; where we know God in part but not in full. The whole life of a Christian is, in fact, liminal in nature. We are living in uncertain days, we are in the world but not of the world, we are sojourners not citizens. But God does not leave us alone or without resources. God provides in the desert. There are many 'desert' settings in the liminal seasons above, and whether it's water from rocks, manna from heaven, or Uber-eats delivered by ravens (as in Elijah's case), God's people don't go without. His intention is not to dry you out and starve you but to rest you and prepare you for what's coming.

Liminal seasons can also be exciting. They are where a past identity or label or experience is relinquished for a new one, a better one, a more fitting one. They are pregnant with possibilities: the birthing suites of new projects, passions, and pursuits. Creativity energy and potential is unleashed in these spaces. Ed Catmull from Pixar once said, "There's a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking."

Are you in a liminal season? Are you in-between one thing and another? Has something finished and you aren't sure what's next? Are you in a 'desert' of sorts in your life? Let God guide you. God uses these liminal seasons to bring you closer to him, to prepare you for what's next; perhaps to make you vulnerable enough so that you will lean on him so that he can empower you, rather than doing it in your own strength. The Biblical examples above are all followed by a period of God moving inexorably forward in his redemptive purposes. For Elijah, Jesus, and Paul, liminal seasons occur before launching heaven-and-earth shattering ministries. They occur in preparation for deliverance and transformation, for redemption and victory. 

They key is to embrace the process. Embrace the peaceful quiet of the abandoned subway of your life, blessedly void of rushing bodies; embrace the vacated football arena, heaving a sigh of relief for a day's work finished; embrace the quiet of the warehouse before the next shift comes on and it all whirs back into life again. Look to God in the waiting, and he will comfort you. Don't rush it. To rush forward may be to take yourself backwards—into something that is not for you. Trust God's timing, and he will take you to the next thing. 

Allow him to heal you, transform you, prepare you for what he has for you—which is infinitely greater than you can ask or imagine—to gently guide you through the ambiguity, the vulnerability and the the disorientation. These will pass. Allow him to gently open your hands and to prise your fingers off the past, letting it go so that you might embrace the future. Be still in this season, and he will renew your strength, and you will rise up on wings like eagles. Know this: it may not feel like it, but the best is yet to come. 

(For more on this topic, I recommend this book: "How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You're Going: Leading in a Liminal Season." by Susan Beaumont).