Distress Enlarges Us

“Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.” – Psalm 4:1
 
The more one thinks of these words, the more they open their wonderful meaning to us. Darby renders it, “In pressure, Thou hast enlarged me”; and the translator Kay renders it, “In straits Thou madest wide room for me.”
Whatever the pressure be, in that pressure—think of it—enlargement is ours, the very opposite of what the word pressure suggests. We may sometimes feel distressed; here, then, is a word of pure hope and strong consolation. No distress need cramp us or crowd us into ourselves, making us smaller and poorer in anything that matters. Largeness, like the largeness of the sea, is His gift to us. We shall not be flattened in spirit by pressures, but instead enlarged; in the narrow ways of pain or temptation, He will make wide room for us.

– Amy Carmichael
Posted in Denton church.