Devotional Messages

DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE

Deuteronomy 33:27a –  The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.  (RSV)

One of the worst things about growing up is that the scale of the world changes.  I think about this when I’m in a line, where you’re surrounded by those metal railings made with two heights of pipe that make a perfect climbing toy – if you’re only 3 feet tall.  There are other examples, I’m sure.  It’s a lot harder for an adult to hang out in a pillow fort, for instance, because we take up too much space.  It’s a lot more awkward to share a chair with a friend.

But I think one of the worst losses that comes once you grow to certain size is the utter comfort of being a small child cradled in someone’s lap.  Once you’re big, of course, your lap can hold a child and still be cuddly.  But it’s not the same as being the child.  There is something so viscerally soothing about being held by someone bigger than you.  It’s the bodily manifestation of truly believing that “everything will be all right.”

I think that’s the feeling that’s being described when the scriptures say “and underneath are the everlasting arms.”  Those arms will never fail; they will never turn us away.  We can always seek them out, and we will never outgrow them.  As we turn to consider our grief and loss this weekend for All Saints, we will do well to remember that those arms are there.  They can hold the biggest sorrows, the ones that threaten to overwhelm us, even as they sympathize with the pettiest upsets too.  “There, there,” our hearts will hear.  “I am here.  I’ve got you.”

Usually when we think about how “big” God is, we think about the vastness of the universe.  But what if sometimes God is just the right size to hold us in those everlasting arms so that we truly feel like a beloved child.  That is the place of comfort where we are invited to dwell.