Partitions and Compartments – A ‘Big-Enough’ Life

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”

~Deuteronomy 29:29a (NIV).

God withholds many things from us, even though it might otherwise seem the whole world’s our oyster. This is because the whole world would be too much for just about everyone.

We can see here we’re afforded a view of the world that we can accept. It’s in this that we can see that God’s not being unfair, but compassionate towards us.

The ordinary life can be seen as partitioned; we’re allowed unfettered access within the partitions that contain us, and the compartments within the partition make up the different aspects of each of our lives.

One clear partition is living in one country at any one time; for most of us we live in one country for ninety to one-hundred percent of our lives. But we can only live in one ‘partition’ at a time.

Why would we want it all in any event?

Yet, greedily we do want more; we always do. It’s often our lack of self esteem, or lack otherwise of things generally within, that warrants ‘more’ of anything, unless of course we’re so absorbed by the things we want more of, that we’re beyond—in that context—thinking selfishly; captivated headlong by a healthy passion toward godly grace, for instance.

Time for Thankfulness

This is the nature of life that we should be very thankful to God for.

The fact that God’s wisdom has designed a life we’re capable for and that—for all intents and purposes—is not beyond us, is the key. And this is said even in the context of life that does present to us many overwhelming situations—and yet, we’re not often or completely overwhelmed. And even when we are we have the rest of God to scramble back to.

We have comparatively little and safe lives, though this is not at all undermining our struggling in the midst of the bigness of life. This merely proves how much God loves us; that the Lord is revealing to us what is safely known, and nothing beyond.

We can look on in awe at the universe beyond our own partitioned existence and just humbly acknowledge how many things of God will always be higher than our own understanding.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.