I recently finished reading John White's Daring To Draw Near , a classic treatise on the prayers of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Daniel, Hannah, Job, David, Paul and Jesus. And I will keep going back to chew on nuggets of truth that deepen my understanding of God. Today, I highlight Job in a lengthy quotation which I have captioned Reduced to Size.

As I reflect on my life, especially in the immigrant phase here in Canada, I see a woman reduced to invisibility fighting to say "I am somebody! I am valid!" She found herself being 'put in her place' too many times and she balked at that place, for it was not her 'fit'. 

Finally, she just got tired of fighting and withdrew. Then God started to strip her of her man-made self-image and started to teach her about who she truly was and where her 'place' is as you can see in this older post. She is still learning this as I pen these words.

If you can identify with me, then these words will minister to you too.
Be blessed.
Sita


Reduced To Size
(Quote taken from John White, Daring To Draw Near:)

~""I am of small account".(Job)
"It is comforting to be reduced to size. I think of the time I entered Ely Cathedral, stark in its naked simplicity, yet awe-inspiring beyond words. My heart stood still before an upward sweep of towering Gothic arches, light and the beauty of space. It was good to feel small; good because something so great made being small at once fitting and uplifting. One cannot simultaneously be puffed up and lifted up.

For Job, of course, it was the same thing on another level. He experienced smallness in every sense: morally, intellectually and physically in the Presence of majesty. It was painful because he was shattered by his stupid folly. Yet: we are never at home when we swell with importance. We may think that we are having a high, but if so, it is a high never free from burdens and tensions. We may be hurt to see our real size for the first time, though in seeing it we will be delivered from the burden of having to keep our bloated image up to size. Being big became to Job as unnecessary as speech had become.

There is something both profoundly healthy and holy about being small and reduced to silence. Nowadays we lay great stress on having a proper self-image. We rightly see that feelings of inferiority can hamper the way we live. To feel that we are no good gives us a hangdog, self-hating attitude toward life. We therefore seek to correct such a state of affairs by having an "improved self-image," by which we usually mean a bigger and better idea of ourselves. Supposedly we are to look in the mirror and be impressed by what we see.

Yet is this how God intends it? It seems to me that the real problem of having a poor self-image (or, in more old-fashioned terms, "an inferiority complex") lies in self-disgust. It really does not matter how samll we are, but how at peace we are with ourselves. And he is at peace who has seen himself appropriately placed in the total scheme of things. The problem is not that we are small but that we are competitive and therefore displaced persons in the mad scramble for a place in life. Consequently we grow resentful of others, resentful even of God. We tread in the footsteps of Lucifer. We are children seeing who is the tallest, but we are measuring ourselves by false and shifting standards.

To know that we are small yet accepted and loved, and that we fit into the exact niche in life a loving God has carved out for us is the most profoundly healthy thing I know. It does not inhibit boldness or assertiveness when these are called for, and it certainly delivers us from silly, aggressive posturing and shouting. Knowing our real place in life we never need to feel threatened. Most of all we are left free to wonder at the glory and majesty of God, drinking in drafts of living water and knowing what we are created for."~ John White