Jeff Manion’s The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions (Zondervan, 2010) is about those times when life isn’t what it was and the future is uncertain. It’s about walking through the desert, a hard place like grief, lost jobs, financial duress, illness, broken relationships. The Land Between is a metaphor for the undesired transitions we experience in life.
If you haven’t experienced a time like this you haven’t lived long enough. Adversity comes to us all.
Under pressure, we choose to be and become. How we respond to pressure influences the kind of person we will be, perhaps for the rest of our lives.
Manion, Senior Teaching Pastor of Ada Bible Church in Michigan, notes that God wants to shape, mold, and refine us and that God knows we’re most open when we’re in the desert. He wants us to learn to trust him. God allows us to experience what we consider suffering so we may gain strengthen.
The Land Between is a quite readable book. It’s chock full of illustrative stories gleaned from years in Pastor Manion’s ministry and it features applications born of experience, personal and pastoral. Indeed the book’s most interesting paragraphs describe his own story and what he learned then and now.
This country seems to be in The Land Between right now. America isn’t sure of itself. We’re losing respect abroad. We’re engaging in infighting among ourselves. We’ve not agreed upon how to describe our enemies (meaning those who hate us), and we’re uncertain really how to describe ourselves. We can’t answer the question “What is an American,” which makes it difficult to resolve immigration issues.
America is in The Land Between. The way out for America is the same as the way out for individuals. Biblical signposts are visible. God has not forgotten and will respond. But we must respond first to him. The good news is there’s still time.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
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