issue 63

"Clear lots of ground for your tents! Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big! Use plenty of rope, drive the tent pegs deep. You're going to need lots of elbow room for your growing family. You're going to take over whole nations; you're going to resettle abandoned cities. Don't be afraid - you're not going to be embarrassed. Don't hold back - you're not going to come up short.” Isaiah 54:2-4 (Message Bible)

Not everyone is an adventurer!

There aren’t too many people who relish the idea of constantly going out and doing things they’ve never done before, of never settling in one place or to one thing. Most of us like stability and a level of predictability for our life – what time we’ll have dinner, what type of holiday we’ll go on, knowing that our friends are there for us when we could do with a chat. Even when life is a bit boring it’s often still preferable to the unknown.

But there’s a difference between never knowing what’s going to happen next and making the choices to ENLARGE who you are and what you do with your life. In this scripture, God is encouraging us not to be content with living a little life. He says that all of us can be larger than we think, even if we stay in the same place and do the same type of things all of our lives. It’s about living LARGE, not about living a life we can’t cope with.

The problem lies in how easy it is to allow the issues of our lives, good and bad, to become a tool to en-small who we are and what we do. We let the seasons and the circumstances we face shrink us down, draw us back, dull our sharpness… and then we wonder what happened to our life and why it feels so restricted. It’s because our need for security has driven out our ability to fully live, fully inhabiting all the days of the years we have here on this earth.

Life is sometimes tough. I suppose you’ve noticed that. We face challenges that we felt unprepared for and disappointments we didn’t expect and our carefully laid out plans often go awry or come to nothing. Hopes and dreams that used to operate as bright stars to steer the course of our life suddenly blinked a couple of times and then disappeared, or seemed to, leaving us feeling directionless and empty.

What do we do at times like that? The scripture about enlarging was written to a barren woman. You extend your house because your family is growing and you need more space. It was ludicrous to tell her to enlarge when the circumstances were shouting to her that she should en-small but faith is never reasonable or sensible. To the contrary, it’s about trust. Trusting God! The One who has the capacity to bring enlargement even in the most barren circumstances and fill those circumstances with laughter and joy and productivity. Impossible I know, but God is Master of the impossible, once we learn we can trust Him.
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There’s a poem by Dawna Markovna that thrills me; check it out on the net, but here are a few lines –

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear of falling… or catching fire
I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me
To make me less afraid, more accessible
To loose my heart until it becomes -
a wing… a torch… a promise

Oh, I LOVE that! I wish I’d written it! It sets my heart free to not have to be safe, to not have security as my god but to know that if God is the Author of my salvation, He can be the Finisher of it as well and that I don’t have to be afraid, even when there are things to be afraid of… and that I am safe in Him, even when I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

The older I get, the more aware I am that my allotted years are finite, whether they’re 70 or 80 or 95. How I live my life now is packing for my future in eternity. In other words, whatever I use my hours and days for now is who I will be in eternity. My daughter and her family recently moved from UK to Australia. They packed all their worldly goods into a shipping container and what they put in there was what they used to start the next phase of their lives.

Our years on this earth are like a dot on the landscape of eternity and the way we live our lives right now is who we will be when we leave this earth. There won’t be any time after that to become wiser, stronger, more generous and less afraid. We won’t be kinder then if we’re not learning kindness now. We won’t be more respectful then if we do not determine to treat with respect the people who inhabit our lives now. We won’t speak life into our situation then if we keep giving into our desire to languish in our scummy, lukewarm bath of negativity now.

Who we are becoming now in our day-to-day irritations and pressure and pains is dictating the formation of who we will be, not just in our middle years and old age, but in eternity. Not that I’m suggesting that there is negativity in heaven; no, that’s not the case. But the good that has been carved into my nature using the circumstances of my present life is what I will stand in then, and whatever I’ve not chosen to put into my life now won’t exist in me in eternity.

So… no bad stuff because that’s all forgiven at the Cross, but only as much of the greatness that God has called me to will exist in eternity as I allow to grow in me now. It won’t be that He has failed me, but that instead of making the choices to enlarge despite my barrennesses, I have allowed them to en-small me, to shrink and contain me.

That’s why I love that scripture and Dawna’s poem so much… because they allow for brokenness but not for smallness. There is no person for whom that scripture does not apply; we all have barrenness in aspects of our life but we can all make the choice to spread out with plenty of rope to make our lives larger than circumstances would want to dictate that we be.

Let life in Christ strengthen and equip you to be what only you can be and do what only you can do. Let your relationships show that you’ve done that – your marriage, your family, your job, your ministry, because God is a God of freedom to move, not of confinement. He’s not a God of narrow perspective, but He’s the One who takes our tiny lives and uses them to write His-story.

Make the choice to live large. It’ll be worth it. Remember, eternity lasts forever!

Love

Bev