The Space Where Everything Is: Mary, the In-Between and the Sacred Ordinary
Jeremy Sims
6 min read ⭑
Life is filled with events, celebrations, milestones — the moments we photograph, throw parties for, invite others to witness. If we were to gather our memories, most would cluster around those occasions. The rest — the vast majority of our lives — unfolds in the spaces between birthdays and holidays, between vacations and milestones.
The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” It is a way of speaking about the place that is not where I once was, but not yet where I will be. In one sense, all of life is liminal. No moment can be repeated, no time revisited. I am always changing. I will arrive at tomorrow differently than I arrived at today.
But that’s not the liminality I want to dwell on. While all of life exists in a state of transition, there are seasons of liminality — periods when change is not just inevitable but undeniable. It’s not that I need a change. It’s that I am changing. The person I was, the life I lived, no longer fits the way it once did. The world hasn’t shifted, but something in me has. Now everything feels misaligned. My equilibrium is off, the familiar feels foreign and — in the language of family systems theory — the homeostasis has been knocked off kilter.
Jardel Vieira; Unsplash
Liminality is, in many ways, the un-season. The historic church calendar is marked by feasts and celebrations — Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Epiphany, Transfiguration. But those are the high days, the ones that stand out. The majority of the calendar is something else entirely — Ordinary Time. The spaces between. The moments that don’t demand a feast but still shape a life. Even for the Redeemer of the universe, most of life was lived in the unremarkable. From his birth to age 30, we have one recorded story. One. Jesus, the One John said did so many things the world itself couldn’t contain the books (John 21:25), spent 90% of his life in the monotony of sleep and meals, work and school, and walking and waiting.
That doesn’t mean the extraordinary was absent. Quite the opposite. The Spirit moves through both the mundane and the miraculous, through long seasons of stillness and moments of sudden transformation. Liminal spaces aren’t just places of waiting; they are places of formation. Even when nothing seems to be happening, something always is.
Mary, Our Guide
No one was more present to the un-seasons of Jesus’ life than his mother, Mary. She lived in the waiting — between the angel’s word and the world’s recognition, between the promise and the fulfillment. She knew what it meant to hold joy and uncertainty at the same time, to stand in the tension of what was and what would be. She is the threshold, the space where humanity brushes against divinity, where the eternal takes shape in the ordinary. As Galatians says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4, NRSVUE). In the fullness of time, she carries Christ, but she also carries the questions, the quiet ache of the in-between.
That is where we live, too. We are between annunciation and fulfillment, between the whisper of promise and its arrival. The weight of an in-between life is familiar — the space where nothing seems to be happening, and yet everything is. The unmarked, uncelebrated ordinary, where faithfulness looks like showing up and waiting looks like work. Mary reminds us that this space is sacred. God is just as present in the unseen as in the spectacular. She reminds us that to bear Christ is to embrace liminality itself — to be stretched between sorrow and joy, between already and not yet, between fear and the quiet certainty that something is coming, something that will turn the world on its head.
Mary is both virgin and mother, obedient and free, lowly and exalted, mother of sorrows and queen of heaven. She is a bridge between contradictions, embodying the space between. Just as the Spirit was at work in the life of the Liminal Woman, so the Spirit moves within us in these threshold moments. The Holy Spirit is not bound to any season or stage — the scope of God’s work is infinite. And yet, throughout Christian history, we see patterns. The Spirit seems to use these unsettled, in-between spaces — the un-season — to do a particular kind of work. This waypoint uniquely allows us to recognize and lean into this work. The Spirit is never restricted but seems to take full advantage of the disequilibrium.
Holy Acquiescence
Christian history has been intentional in reminding us of Mary’s ordinariness. To the average observer, there was nothing that would have made her stand out. She was an ordinary girl from an unremarkable place, betrothed to an ordinary man at an ordinary time in history. There was nothing noteworthy about her — except for the angel Gabriel’s words: “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28, NIV). Whatever God saw in her, the world would have overlooked.
“Liminality often feels like a passage to rush through, but God is the God of the eternal now. Though he holds all time at once, he meets me only in this moment.”
What we do see is her response to the impossible news that she would carry, birth and raise the God-man: “And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her” (Luke 1:38 ESV). Let that settle in you. Mary isn’t a passive bystander. Mary isn’t acted upon but accepts this calling willingly.
In 2010, I began my doctoral work at Portland Seminary with three of my closest friends. We called ourselves “The Four Pentecostals.” That season of my life was one of the most enjoyable. We studied together, wrote together, grew together and transitioned together. Within a few years of beginning the program together, we all moved into different places of ministry and calling. Except me.
One of my friends became the lead pastor of a megachurch serving thousands of people weekly. Another friend became the executive vice president of one of the fastest-growing private colleges in America. His influence and opportunities were immeasurable. My other friend was named the “Favorite Professor” on that same campus for the third year in a row.
I was a youth pastor at a medium-sized church with a medium-sized salary, living with my parents, who had given up their careers to help me with Tiff and the kids. I celebrated with my friends and at the same time remember thinking, I guess this is it. I’ve missed my window of ever doing anything “great.” It was a painful time. I was watching the love of my life, once full of joy and laughter, struggle to smile because her muscles no longer cooperated. Professionally, I was doing good work with good people, but I longed for something more distinguished, something with wider influence. The vocational success of my dear friends only deepened my dissatisfaction.
Yet something happened in that season that is hard to describe. The only way I know to explain it is with the term holy acquiescence. There was a supernatural contentment in my heart. It wasn’t a resignation or slothful laziness, but rather an assurance that I was doing good work. I honestly believed that everything that God wanted to do in me and through me would never be disrupted by the circumstances of my life.
Mary shows us this holy acquiescence in her response to Gabriel. The womb of redemption was not imposed on her; she accepted it freely, empowered by the Spirit but never coerced. The Liminal Woman shows us this grace: “Not my will, but yours.”
This waypoint offers the Holy Spirit a rare opportunity to reshape desires and expectations misshapen by culture, distorted by family or bent by the well-meaning but misguided influence of friends. In the unsettling space of the in-between, where I am no longer what I was but have no idea what I will become, the Spirit finds a wedging board, a place to press, to shape, to mold.
Liminality often feels like a passage to rush through, but God is the God of the eternal now. Though he holds all time at once, he meets me only in this moment. The Liminal Woman, who dwells perpetually on the threshold, reveals that this space is not just a way through — it is a place of meaning and beauty. I need not push forward; everything meant for my good is here, now.
Jeremy Sims is professor of spiritual formation at Southeastern University, where he leads the Doctor of Ministry and Master of Arts in Ministerial Leadership programs. He previously served in pastoral ministry for 25 years and is the author of Easy As Hard Gets and co-author with his wife Hannah of What Is Spiritual Direction?
Taken from “The Way of the Spirit” by Jeremy Sims. Copyright ©2026. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press.
