It’s been quite gray and overcast the last few days; the clouds have brought the limits of the sky closer to the ground by making a sort of foggy barrier between us humans on the earth and the sun. Though the sun illuminates the clouds from the far side, it might be possible to mistake the dim solidity of the clouds for some final compressed ceiling; it might be possible to begin to think the circle of the world had truly constricted, as if sky itself were becoming scarce.  

The cloud cover has been solid; in other words, I could not see any edges and, if there was any movement to the clouds themselves I couldn’t detect it. But just since I’ve been sitting here under this morning of unchanging gray, a sudden burst of sunlight dropped straight through some fissure in the firmament and woke up the world with startling yellows and bursts of orange. The whole static monochrome came to life in vibrant color. The sky was rolled back for a moment like an old scroll to reveal another sky beyond the small cloud compression, a window onto worlds upon worlds beyond this world was flung wide open. 

For several years now, every Sunday night that I’m in town, a handful of friends and I meet to drink tea, visit, read, and pray together. This time each week has become such a strong strand in the fabric of my days, and such a source of comfort and stability, that I really miss it when I can’t be there. God gives us many homes-away-from-home in this world, or “pleasant inns” that, far from ceasing our pilgrimage, become reminders and places of rest that strengthen us for our continued journey. So, Lewis says, 

“The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and [provide] an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

God gives us pleasures and pleasant inns along the way that work like sunlight breaking through the clouds to remind us: there is still a glorious destination to which we are called. There is some sense in which the meal of bread and wine both meets our hunger and thirst while at the same time deepening our appetite for God. It’s not that the Lord, in order to draw us deeper, withdraws as we approach, but that the more we take in of Him the more capacious we become, the further you go the further there is to go. And so the pleasant inns, the homes-away-from-home in this world, by providing places to stop, keep us going. 

But, for me, I confess, there is another helpful thing that happens on those Sunday nights that is like the Sun breaking through the clouds, and that is simply that my world gets bigger. The overcast is no longer allowed to set the limits of the sky. 

Last night, those friends and I read chapter two of G.K. Chesterton’s classic “Orthodoxy”, which Chesterton calls a sort of “slovenly autobiography” or a record of his “elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.” More or less, Chesterton lines up for us the train cars of thought that he rode to arrive at faith in Christ. And it’s a really fun ride, especially if you read it out loud with friends. 

What struck a personal note with me in last night’s chapter, was the idea that we all have a tendency to get stuck in small circles of thought that constrict our hopes, limit our imaginations, wither our joys, and drive us crazy by trapping us in the tiny cosmos of believing only or primarily in ourselves. In those constricted circles of thought, we can spend our energy working out all the rationale of our small vantage point until, as Chesterton says, we have a theory that “explains a large number of things, but that does not explain them in a large way.” 

For instance, I may become fixated within the small circle of thought that says that when I walk into the dinner party everyone is silently judging me for wearing a blue shirt. All the reasons to support my paranoia are present, I’m the only one wearing a blue shirt, everyone is silent about it, and I’m in the room with them. The fact that no one mentions my blue shirt can mean one thing and one thing only – they’re all judging me for wearing it. 

The failure to allow any larger explanations is the definition in this case of madness. The circle explains everything, but it’s a very small circle. “How much larger your life would be, if your self could  become smaller in it,” says Chesterton, “how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you.” (and your blue shirt, I might add) The larger explanation is that no one has noticed my blue shirt in the least. As solid as my little conspiracy seems, the truth is that I have no fellow conspirators, just me, me, me, and me. With such a small world with such a small atmosphere, and me taking up all the air, it’s bound to get awful stuffy in there.  

I know what that feels like. I know what it feels like to be running in circles in my own head without any good idea of how to break out of the tiny echo-chamber world of ‘believing in myself.’ The hardest part about getting out is that I can’t supply what I need, because “a man cannot think himself out of a mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased.” 

What hope is there then? What hope of breaking out of that logically comprehensive, though tiny, round rut? Chesterton’s answer was helpful because it was so counterintuitive to me; we don’t need for our arguments to be defeated by better arguments, necessarily. Rather, we need someone to open a window and let in some fresh air. Chesterton says, “if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument.” 

This morning, as I sat beneath the low-lying clouds in a world grown small and gray, I could feel the circle constricting, when a window in the cloud-rack burst open. My little bedroom opened upon a wide universe of bright possibility. Sometimes going for a walk is enough. Often I like to break a spray of cedar leaves in my palm, and the scent arrives like a blessed apocalypse. A good book, story, or poem, a song, meal, show of affection, or laughter can often open a window that lets in the air of a larger, more beautiful world for me. What about you? What breaks the spells that shrink your world? 

Of course, the Gospel is the good-spell that flings every window and gate wide that the King of Glory may enter. The Gospel is the good-spell that pierces the fume that wreaths and chokes us like Sam Gamgee in the belly of Mordor when he is smitten by the starlight. Sam knew better but forgot, just like we so easily forget that our whole world rests within a circumference so large we can only speak of it in terms so mysterious, vast, so capable and tender as God’s hands. And, now that Christ has come, we may think of those hands as wounded ones. Our small circles of thought are encompassed by those wounds, held in those hands. Or as my friend Bubba likes to quote one of his favorite profs, Dr. Blakemore – when we ask where exactly is the universe in relation to God, we enter into a mystery that if we try to get our heads around, our heads will split; but that we may rest our head upon – that “God made room for the universe within himself.” 

I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that according to the wealth of his glory he will grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person,  that Christ will dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you will be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you will be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. 

Ephesians 3:14-21