This Wide-Open, Spacious Life

Currently: at the public library, because my new apartment doesn't have internet yet. (p.s. any suggestions for good summer reading, anyone?)

Ever since I first stumbled across Katie Davis’s blog a few years ago, I have been in awe of this girl who, though just one year older than me, lives in Uganda with an adopted family of fourteen girls, and runs and sponsorship and feeding program for two hundred more kids. Seriously. This past week I read her book Kisses From Katie, and through it felt like I learned a lot and was convicted of a lot. “I believe there is only one truly courageous thing we can do with our lives: to love unconditionally. Absolutely, with all of ourselves, so much that it hurts and then more,” (p.253) says Katie, and she wholly lives it, too – always giving the glory to God.

One part that really stuck out to me, however, was a passage she referenced from 2 Corinthians 6, but she included it in the Message paraphrase:

“People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly…

in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, 

steady hand; with gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth 

and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; 

when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; 

true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God;

 terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, 

but refusing t die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; 

living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all. 

Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long 

for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. 

We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel 

comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, 

but you’re living them in a small way. 

I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. 

Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!”

That last part, that last sentence, seizes my heart and makes me want nothing less than that – than a life wide open and spilling out love, not closed up and small. Don’t you agree?

[image via The Journey]