How much space do you need to be spacious?

So, life is busy. It is eclesiastically-correct to confess that you have regular Quiet Times. It is actually quite hard in such a techno-noisy world. Really. Truly. History is in compression for the advanced world. There is money to be made, bills to be paid, goals to be achieved, visions to be reached, ambitions to be serviced. A little legalism makes us feel bad, but then we find a free Saturday morning, or a late night read, or a good prayer session in the shower, and we pick ourselves up in grace.


My problem is starting to see afresh how 70% of the world lives. Women raising their own kids plus their dead sisters' children too; endless work in the fields and then the crops still fail; miles to walk for dirty river water; double and treble shifting for pathetic wages; 3 billion people living on less than $3 a day; 400 million people getting malaria every year; Eastern Europeans utterly dislocated, socially isolated and financial emasculated as they wash dishes and wait tables day and night. One emaciated Lithunian man who helped in our recent home move was covered in bedbug bites.


So now, how can we access God without all the luxury of roominess, whether we take advantage of it or not? What is a nonsense to me is that we insist on people coming to conferences to get the touch (what a waste of precious human and financial resources, mostly); what a nonsense to insist on saints having daily and lengthy times alone; or on everyone reading the Bible in a year. It only keeps the middle class ineffective in reaching the world. 


Hear, hear, for every time any saint has accessed revelation from scripture and the touch of God through prayer. But God is more robust; His word more portable; His prayer closet with us uncosily real. I read a "tweet" more recently (I have a healthy disdain for the egoism of Twitter - the sacredness of real friendships being traded for the fix of public notariety) that read, "Love the stirring of the early morning - beware of those who always rush, they never find that quiet place with the lover of their soul". I see the point - it is a god one - but it is fundamentally unworkable for the majority of human beings. I would rather re-word it into this: "Love the stirrings of my heart at midnight - beware of those who need lots of space, they never find that quiet innerspace with the lover of their soul".


I am not saying abandon your reading or prayers. I am saying, let's know and demonstrate and declare that it is our God who said "Go, and I will be with you, even to the end of the ages". He is the God of the field worker, the widow, the chronically sick, the abused and underpaid; the people sleeping 15 to a room.


Maybe it is time to reflect on this aspect, and realize how corrupted it has been with Helenistic thinking that cerebralizes and privatizes faith; that limits "success" to a tiny percentage of rich home-owners. Jewish thinking believes that we see God as we walk with Him; we receive love as we give it away; we find revelation by walking in it.


I love reading; I don't have as much time for it now. It was a privilege. But now I see - not just the robustness of my God who is anything but a geni in a bottle needing precise rubbing; but a God who sent his Son to die for the sick and suffering and starving. And a God who has commissioned me, beyond my middle-class brass bubble, to bravely step out of the boat; and wade out of the pool the middle class boat is sailing in; and dive into the depths of the reality of opportunity to live and breathe and die amongst the needy.


N