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11-20-2007, 07:52 PM
by Joan C. Webb
A Spacious Place
Psalm 18:19: "...the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place".
Marlon sat across the lunch table from me at a writers conference and confided, "My father would never let me finish a sentence. He kept telling me that I would never 'make it.' I guess I'm still trying to prove that he was wrong." Because Marlon was expected to be the precise image of his father's dream it thwarted his ability to fulfill his own dreams.
Perhaps Marlon's father tried too hard to get his son to become what he could never attain himself. Indeed Marlon tried so hard to please that he developed a lifestyle of excessive doing and overworking. Both of them were confined by the tyranny of rigidity and exacting standards. Some of us may identify with the striving. But we are tired of trying so hard and still falling short. We long for a safe place where we can find relief and support. God's love offers that safety. His love is wide and unconditional. God leads us out of the prison of unreasonable expectations into a spacious area of acceptance and permission. In this place we gain the dignity and freedom to start again.
Lord, hold my hand
as I walk out of confinement.
A Spacious Place
Psalm 18:19: "...the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place".
Marlon sat across the lunch table from me at a writers conference and confided, "My father would never let me finish a sentence. He kept telling me that I would never 'make it.' I guess I'm still trying to prove that he was wrong." Because Marlon was expected to be the precise image of his father's dream it thwarted his ability to fulfill his own dreams.
Perhaps Marlon's father tried too hard to get his son to become what he could never attain himself. Indeed Marlon tried so hard to please that he developed a lifestyle of excessive doing and overworking. Both of them were confined by the tyranny of rigidity and exacting standards. Some of us may identify with the striving. But we are tired of trying so hard and still falling short. We long for a safe place where we can find relief and support. God's love offers that safety. His love is wide and unconditional. God leads us out of the prison of unreasonable expectations into a spacious area of acceptance and permission. In this place we gain the dignity and freedom to start again.
Lord, hold my hand
as I walk out of confinement.