You probably know that the month of January is named after the Roman god Janus.

Isn't it odd that despite the impact of the Christian faith we still use these pagan names

both for the days of the week and the months of the year.

It's always intrigued me.

And yet perhaps it's in God's providence as a reminder to us that we live between the times,

like between Christmas and New Year, between the coming of Christ and then the return of Christ. We're part of God's

new creation. We're new men and women in Christ. But we're still living in a world that's alienated

from him. And even the names of the days of the week and the months of the year are a kind of constant

reminder of that to us.

But back to Janus, he's the God who faces both ways. He looks backwards to the past and

looks forward to the future. But even if we don't especially like the fact that the month

of January is named after a Roman deity,

I think we can understand the experience, and there's a very specifically Christian version of it,

because as Christians, we too live facing both ways, not in the sense of being a hypocrite,

but in the sense of living, looking back to what

the Lord Jesus did in His first coming and looking forwards to what He will do at His

Second Coming.

And so we sometimes say that as Christians we live between the times.

We live the Christian life between the already of what Christ has done and the not yet of the

completion of His work.

And actually, we're reminded of that every time we take the Lord's Supper.

We proclaim His death in the past until he comes again in the future.

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