Shrinkage

During the lockdown, I have felt that my life has shrunk. I work at my desk in the day. In the evening I'm in the house. I venture outside at lunchtime into the garden. The weekends are similar, a trip out to Princes Risborough to get the mower fixed was high adventure.

I am used to going to work every day on the bus, a little shopping on the way to work perhaps, a walk at lunchtime, maybe the library at the way home.

At the weekend I might have a short break, or visit family. And there were holidays! when we actually stayed somewhere else for a week or two.

Now life seems restricted.

One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.

Psalm 27:4

The psalmist (David) wanted to live in the 'house of the LORD' or the temple all his life. At the time of David, there was no temple, so it would have been a tabernacle. A big tent, but a tent none the less. Maybe the size of a marquee. How big can a tent get? So why did David think it was OK to stay in a space so small?

Maybe because he knew that by seeking out God he would learn so much that his physical surroundings would not feel small. God is so big, that if we spend all our lives searching Him out, we cannot know it all, we will not complete our knowledge of God.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19

Here Paul asks that the Ephesians know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. The expectation is that it is very wide, high and deep. What would it look like to grasp this? What would it look like to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God? I don't know, but I reckon that my life would not feel restricted or shrunk, it would feel unimaginably huge and expansive.

So maybe when my life feels shrunk, I need to seek God, because in Him there is enough and more.