Space

By Eugene Seah, 22, Singapore

“C’mon, you’ve got to give him some space to breathe.”
“I need to have some alone-time please.”
“Perhaps we should both take some time off, give ourselves space to think things over.”

Do these phrases sound familiar?

We often have to worry about intruding the invisible personal bubble surrounding loved ones and friends, or we wonder whether we are intimate enough with so-and-so to probe and share our opinions. Despite our good intentions, we sometimes end up being too intrusive into the lives of those closest to us.

It’s never easy interacting with people. Misunderstandings, hurt and frustration are things probably not strange to all of us. Neither is it uncommon to come to a point where you just want to shut everything out, forget about being concerned or loving to anyone, and opt for the simpler, safer route of inaction and watch things happen from the fringe.

However, the relationship that God offers to us is different. In it, there are no such inhibitions, no fear of stepping on each other’s toes. He offers each of us a personal and intimate relationship with Him, in which there is no worry, no masquerade and no inhibition to love and be loved. There are no qualms to ask to know more. He sees our hearts and knows us like the back of His hand.

Having this open and unafraid relationship with God is only possible because of Jesus Christ. Paul writes, “Yet now He has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in His physical body. As a result, He has brought you into His own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault” (Colossians 1:22). The only reason that we are able to stand clean before a holy God, and to have a relationship with Him, is because Christ has already died for our sins.

On top of this, this wonderful, perfect relationship with God is meant to bring healing to all other relationships. One example of this is the reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles. “Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of His death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death” (Ephesians 2:16).

The love that we receive from God is a refuge for us to recharge our energy and heal our hurts. But it also has to translate into the ways that we treat those around us, not just for our own sakes, but for God’s. The Bible says, “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to Himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to Him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

So as we, like the psalmist, run to the Lord for shelter against the hurts we receive from other people, let’s learn to let His healing love overflow to those around us!

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart,
all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.
A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 22:37-39

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