"'He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction...'"
(Job 36:16)
In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children go into a wardrobe in a bedroom and emerge into another universe – the land of Narnia. In the long-running British television sci-fi series “Doctor Who,” the Doctor travels through the cosmos in an old British police telephone box – very small from the outside but a vast spaceship on the inside! Think of those images when considering the spacious place we have in the Lord.
A walled city on a hill in Italy seems claustrophobic to live in. But the believer’s “city on a hill” is not at all like that. It is a walled city as far as protection is concerned, but it is also a wide open field. There is no restriction, constriction or cramping. This is the Lord’s gracious alchemy, His glorious paradox.
Many are the times I – and I suspect, you – have felt the “jaws of distress” closing in. Situations arise that we simply cannot see a way out of. And then, somehow, the Lord takes us through, often with an answer that far exceeded what we even hoped for.
A walled city on a hill in Italy seems claustrophobic to live in. But the believer’s “city on a hill” is not at all like that. It is a walled city as far as protection is concerned, but it is also a wide open field. There is no restriction, constriction or cramping. This is the Lord’s gracious alchemy, His glorious paradox.
Many are the times I – and I suspect, you – have felt the “jaws of distress” closing in. Situations arise that we simply cannot see a way out of. And then, somehow, the Lord takes us through, often with an answer that far exceeded what we even hoped for.
Scripture Focus
Psalm 31:1-24
Insight
Are you in a cramped situation? Feeling fenced in? Ask the Lord to bring you out to "a spacious place, broad and wide" (Psalm 31:8).
Bible In A Year
- Isaiah 31-32
- Psalm 86
- Acts 8