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Divine Confinement

Brenda’s Blog – November 19, 2019

(Note) In 2005 I published a book titled Divine Confinement: Facing Seasons of Limitation. It was written during a seven year season of mine while my parents lived out their last days in my house. A section of the book was devoted to short personal responses. I called them “Musings and Amusings.” For the next few months I will share some of them as the bi-monthly blogs. Brenda A. Smith’s book is available as a Kindle book on Amazon here.

Divine Confinement

“You must feel confined.”

Just a passing comment, but it scored a direct hit in my soul. Confinement, yes that is exactly what I feel. I am under house arrest. I sit in my office, looking out the window much like Robert Louis Stevenson lay in a childhood bed of sickness, pretending grand and glorious adventures.

Sadly, I often go into an electronic stupor ad overdose on HGTV. But this isn’t a random confinement – this is one appointed by God – this is divine confinement.

I can either continue making chalk marks on the wall denoting time served, or I can see that this is really a learning lab created to mold me into usefulness. Haven’t I been confined before – a marriage gone bad, a broken relationship with a child, a job with no hope of success, an addiction to chocolate and ice cream, a mean and jealous spirit, a wandering heart — weren’t these all confinements?

But how much better to see God’s hand in this and know that He has the key and that He came to set the prisoners free. I won’t be here on day longer than I need to be and in an ironic twist, Mom and Dad won’t be here one day longer than God knows that I need them to be. Who is taking care of whom?

Aren’t they the stuff of which this confinement is made, so aren’t they the stuff of which the divine purpose will be constructed? And then, ultimately they will be my source of freedom for I will learn to trust Him, love them more dearly, and understand freedom is not lack of confinement, but the recognition that it is divine.

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