Why I'm Smiling

This morning I read Psalm 31 and a word picture has made me grin… almost laugh.

 

This Psalm of David may have been written while on the run from a jealous King Saul.  In the fifth verse is the famous last line that Jesus breathed from the cross, "Into your hands I commit my spirit."  The result for Jesus was reentrance into the eternal presence of the Father.  The result for David was trusting that God would protect his life.

 

A few verses later in the Psalm David sang these words, "You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place." 

 

That's the line.  "Set my feet in a spacious place."  It could read "a big room."   

 

Imagine being surrounded.  I was a young man sledding down a hill in the woods when a bunch of dogs surrounded me.  There were four or five of them and were snarling and barking at me as I stood frozen.  Thinking back, I think they were each 400 pound dogs with teeth the size of meat cleavers, but my mind may have grown reality.

 

I do remember fear.  I remember feeling surrounded.  I remember knowing I couldn't out run them up the hill.  I remember standing outside and feeling like I was in their cell.

 

They left. I slowly thawed out and went home looking around at how big the space was around me.  When I wasn't in the cell of dogs the woods were huge!  I walked through the field where the neighborhood played baseball - it was a gigantic, vast, wallless stadium.  My feet were in a spacious place because they weren't in the cell of angry dogs.

 

So, this morning I grin, almost laugh with joy.  I have been released from the hand of the enemy who longs to bind and constrict me.  I have been delivered from the foot shackles of bondage and the enclosing walls of sin.

 

I have room to run and investigate all I can see of God.  There is ample space for me to stretch within the covenant of His love.  I am not frozen in fear of what the enemy has, my feet have been set in a spacious place - God's love and grace.

 

Don't tell my wife, but the picture I have in my mind is the closing scene of the 32 hour long movie The Sound of Music.  You know, the family running on the top of mountains over looking the rest of the earth.  It's a spacious place.  Guilt isn't roomy.  Sin isn't freeing.  The enemy of my soul doesn't give me room to run.  But... "You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place."

 

"The hills are alive with the sound of music"

 "la la la la" 

 

Pastor Dave