A Broad Place

While I was at camp a few weeks ago, spending time balancing on things alone or in groups and discussing it for graduate credit (okay, we did more than that… but we really did physically balance on a lot of things), one of the discussions that emerged was a comparison between balancing and “the narrow way.”

I countered that with – “Yeah, but doesn’t the Bible also say something somewhere about 'you have set me in a broad place?'”

Clearly, you can see that I’m not one of those preachers who has the Bible memorized. I mean, I know what’s in there, for the most part. But I am terrible at quoting things verbatim, chapter-and-verse, and often have to look things up.

Anyway. We did look it up, and there are indeed a number of places in the Bible where the phrase “a broad place” comes up. So I didn't just pull that out of thin air, which is good, because people do that to the Bible a lot. And the "broad place" passage that has really been speaking to me over and over for these past few weeks is Psalm 31:7-8. Here it is, for my fellow chapter-and-verse challenged brothers and sisters:

I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love,
because you have seen my affliction;
you have taken heed of my adversities,
and have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;
you have set my feet in a broad place.

I’ve been getting back into doing yoga, and as I struggle with balancing poses and the fact that my feet naturally turn out a little bit which makes it hard to do some poses, and the fact that I’m still a little overweight which makes it hard to do other things… that last line keeps coming back to me.

Because the mat is long and narrow, but it feels for me like a broad place. A place where I can slow down and focus on my breathing and accept my body exactly as it is. A place where, for once, I don’t feel like people will laugh if I fail. And one of the few places where I sometimes feel genuinely strong.

***

The call/job/vocation saga continues. I am grateful for a Lutheran understanding of vocation – the understanding that all work can be spiritual in nature, and a good secretary does God’s work as much as a good preacher.

I’m also grateful for a Christian understanding of identity – in the words of Tyler Durden, “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your [bleeping] khakis.”

(Jesus might add “You are who God says you are in your baptism.” Tyler Durden doesn’t go that far, but hey, Fight Club is still a really great movie and I still think that the ending where they bomb all the banks to erase the debt record is maybe one of the best metaphors for the cross and salvation in recent pop culture history. But as usual, I digress.)

I got a phone call on Tuesday to offer me a good administrative job where I would be able to use my English background and editorial skills at a rapidly expanding company. Delighted at the prospect of being employed, I went in on Wednesday to fill out some additional paperwork…

Thursday morning, I got a call from the Bishop’s office to tell me about a lovely little church on a lake in a small town in central Minnesota.

Of course I did!

I joked about this possible scenario - the Bishop's call coming as soon as I got a regular job - to several people before it actually happened. But the fact that it actually happened is less funny and more fraught with questions and confusion and half-remembered quotes about things happening in God’s time and constantly reminding myself that God didn’t have me meet and fall in love with a wonderful person just to take that away from me, and God really doesn’t want me to be miserable… although sometimes I really think God likes to mess with us to see what we’ll do.

(That’s not a very Lutheran thing to think – we’re not big on the whole “God is testing you” thing – but sometimes it’s hard not to go there.)

And through it all, that passage keeps coming back to my head – “you have set my feet in a broad place.” Even though it feels like a tight, anxious spot, I have to trust that I’m set in a broad place. That there is room to wonder, to discern…

...space for conversations with the people I need and trust the most in my life…

…or just space to rest and discover the next right action when it reveals itself to me. And I trust that it will.

Anyway, I’m sort of in the middle of it all, and it’s way too early to say anything, probably too early to even be blogging about it but sometimes the way I hear what I need to hear from the universe is through writing about things. Regardless, things are bubbling and brewing and the Spirit is blowing... and sooner, much sooner than later, I will have some idea where the next chapter of my life will take me.

I don’t know where that is yet.

But I know that it, too, will be a broad place.

 

***In searching for an image to put in this blog, I just discovered that Jurgen Moltmann wrote a whole book called A Broad Place. I heart Jurgen Moltmann. I should probably read that.***

Comments

[Mary Hess]

thank you for reminding me of the "broad place" -- I, too, have been in discernment lately and needed this particular "nudge" from the Spirit