Lenten Reflection 4.2.12

Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? It happened to me once at a hotel on South Beach in Miami. I was there with a Florida Conference UCC committee and our group of about 6 people was all in the elevator together. We all knew each other. And then it happened. The creaking and the slight shudder and the elevator stopped – between floors. We were talking and laughing while someone was trying to call the desk to let them know what had happened. While we were in the elevator, my phone rang and it was my daughter, who was in college at the time. She called to tell me that she had finally decided on her thesis topic. She was going to do a study assessing the relationship between level of religiosity and level of life satisfaction, i.e. happiness. After telling me this, she commented on the laughing and joking in the background and asked where I was. I told her I was stuck in an elevator in a hotel on South Beach with a bunch of people from a Florida Conference committee. I told her it was evidence for her study: Here was a group of church people, high on the religiosity scale, stuck in an elevator laughing and joking while we waited for help, high on the happiness scale.

Being stuck in an elevator gives us a story to tell, but I don’t think anyone likes being confined and closed in like that. When we visited Alcatraz in January, it was shocking how small the cells were. I know when I fly, I don’t like being strapped in and confined to that small seat. Many people find it distasteful to be crammed into the subway or bus at rush hour. For the most part, I think we like to have room to spread out and move around. We like breathing room. We like to feel a sense of space and openness and not feel crowded in.

In Psalm 118, the writer refers to a “broad space:”

Out of my distress I called on God;
God answered me and set me in a broad space.

There it is. That sense of room to move, openness, freedom, lack of confinement and constraint. When I think of a “broad space” I think of more than literal, physical space. To me a “broad space” has broader meanings. A broad space can be associated with an open mind willing to learn new things and see things from new perspectives. A “broad space” conjures up a lot of room for differing ideas and diversity. A “broad space” suggests plenty of space for welcoming people who are diverse. A “broad space” implies room to learn, grow, emerge, transform. A “broad space” gives an impression of room to move around and not just be sedentary and stagnate.

I like this image of a broad space with room for growth and change, with room for differences, with room to breathe, and with room to dance. You may want to consider where you feel hemmed in in your life, where you feel constrained, and think about what a “broad space” might be like and how to move into that space.

Prayer
Divine love is broad: broader than our imaginations, broader than our sins, broader than our comfort zones. May we rest in that love, and let that love bring us to a broad space where there is room for us to heal, to grow, and to extend ourselves in service to others. Amen.